


Defying the Gods

by Nikaya



Category: SMITE (Video Game), Sword Art Online
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-05-31 22:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6489352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikaya/pseuds/Nikaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When five friends log into the new world of Smite - a new virtual reality version of the game - what they discover is something none of them expected. Gripped by the powers of the gods, the party is awed when they team up to just play a match. But when they become trapped inside the game, they have to make a choice: surrender and die, or kill and survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue & Match 1: Nick

_Prologue and Match 1: Nick _

“Just hold on a second!” I yelled at my laptop.

“All of us are already on, waiting for you,” a male voice urged through the computer’s speakers.

“Just gotta get my headset on.” I picked it up off the desk. It was a white band that would cover my eyes and wrap around my head. Once it was on, it would close on my face to make my vision perfect. “I’m getting in now, just meet me at the lobby screen.” I climbed up onto my bed and laid down. Carefully, I plugged the headset into the outlet behind me and placed it over my eyes.

“I’m gonna kick your ass when you get in here,” the voice went on.

To quiet the voice, I yelled again. “Link start!”

The darkness in front of my eyes turned white in a flash of light. Colored orbs seemed to rush at me with words like “Vision” and “Smell” on them, turning green as they checked out. A loud ringing of music, signaling that the game was fully function danced in my ears. Finally, I saw darkness.

“Blink hard, now.” The tutorial’s female voice instructed. I blinked.

I was standing on a small, black platform with a nighttime sky all around me. The constellations were clearly identifiable, and moved slowly with the rest of the stars. Surrounding me were pictures of the gods making a circle around the platform.

I looked down at what I was standing on and it reflected my image in the darkness. I looked exactly as I did in the real world. Light complexion, dark, honey-colored hair that almost reached my waist, and blue eyes. Yup, that was me.

“Welcome to Smite,” she said. “To access the menu, swipe to your right. To access your Friend List and Notifications, swipe left.”

Interrupting her as she said “left”, I heard the loud, familiar clanging of a party invite. I swiped left with my forefinger and the Friend List appeared to my right and Notifications to my left. It felt like I was swiping on a touch screen in the air.

“Cool.” I tapped the Accept button.

Now, I felt myself lifted up slowly, and then suddenly launched straight into the sky. I yelled out of surprise but then I started laughing. It was truly amazing.

I landed hard and fast on the ground. The impact was absorbed entirely by the floor, no pain felt at all.

I opened my eyes to see I was standing in the Jungle Practice Base.

“It’s about time….” said a little girl’s voice. I turned to my right to see Scylla, a tiny little girl glide toward the base from the Ra camp. She was dressed in the fashion of something out of a Tim Burton movie. When her dress reached the base, she burst into particles the color of her dress – a deep evergreen – and transformed.

She reappeared as my boyfriend, Ross. He jogged over to me and my jaw dropped. “That was awesome! Oh my gods!”

He laughed at me. His chocolate brown eyes were sparkling. “Come on, everybody’s practicing for the first match!” He took my hand in his and went to start walking but then stopped. “Oh, first swipe right on your menu.”

I let go of his hand and swiped right.

“Now you have to pick…” he leaned over my menu, his wavy brown hair flopping in his eyes. “That one.” He pointed to a little blue button.

The menu was a horizontal line, reading “Profile, Gods, Store, Social, League, Wisdom”. The blue button was where the “Smite” logo usually appeared between Store and Social. I pressed it with my index finger.

The normal Gods menu appeared in front of me with all of the character icons. Ross nodded to me to pick a God. I picked my main, Neith. Once I tapped her, I was able to select from her skin icons, and – as always – I selected Buccaneith. The menu burst into white particles and a message appeared in front of me: God Locked.

“So you just picked the God you want to play when you leave the base. You can come back and try another one at any point.” he explained. He scratched his stubbly chin as I looked around a bit. “This is basically our party’s home base. We can come back here between every match.” When I looked back to him, he was smirking.

“What?” I said, my voice rising.

“You’re cute when you’re excited.” I smiled at him.

He took my hand again and led me toward the Ra camp. My pace slowed as we approached the edge of the base. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t feel like anything.” he said. Still holding my hand, he passed over the edge of the base, and I gasped. He started to transform with the green of Scylla’s Daisy Despair dress engulfing him. Other than the change in size, he kept holding my hand and it had felt like nothing had changed… except that I was now looking down at and holding the hand of a little girl.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

I felt a tingling sensation around my entire body. Brown sparkles – the color of her outfit – collapsed on me all at once and in a burst of bright white light. When the sparkles settled, I grew a little taller and wore boots, a skirt, and a bandana on my head. I felt a weight on my right shoulder and looked up to see a little monkey with a matching bandana smiling at me. I let go of Ross’ hand and pat his head with my free right hand, holding my blunderbuss in my right.

I beamed at Ross and squealed. “This is amazing!”

He chuckled and shook his head at me, playful but it felt condescending coming from a little girl.

“I have a monkey!” I scratched under his chin. “That was the whole reason I got this skin!”

“I know,” he said, smiling at me still.

“I want to name him….” I thought for a minute. “Can I name him Sun?” I knew Ross occasionally played Sun WuKong.

“Go ahead,” he said, shrugging.  “It’s not like it’s my _name_.”

“Then I’m calling you Sun,” I told the little monkey. He made a little chirping sound and climbed up onto my head. Ross motioned for me to follow him and I jogged along. At the Ra camp, I saw Prizefighter Mercury spinning Ra around in circles.

“Hey Nick!” he called to me. He punched Ra in the face, and the god erupted into a burst of light, screaming as he died. He dashed over in a whirlwind and stroked his mustache. “How you liking the new Smite?”

“It’s amazing,” I said to my friend Morgan. He hadn’t even broken a sweat fighting Ra… as usual.

“It’s pretty fuckin’ awesome.” Ra appeared again behind him and he held up a finger. “One sec.” He dashed over to Ra, spun him around and dashed through him as the god screamed again. Two seconds later, he ran back over to me smirking.

“Is Chase here, too?” I asked.

Mercury and Scylla nodded. “He’s over by the Fire Giant,” Mercury explained. “He’s determined to learn how to beat it as Sylvannus.”

“Isn’t he the one that said Sylvannus has no attack power?”

“He did,” Scylla agreed. “But he wants to make one of his stupid builds for when we play smurf games later.”

“Alright, you guys do your thing,” I said. “I know Ross wants to get back to practicing.” I leaned down and kissed him – as Scylla – on the cheek. He blushed a little through the green skin.

“Okay, that’s weird,” Morgan said, laughing. “Nick, you’re dating a little girl.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll be around,” I said. I held my breath and jumped. Just as I always have, I used Neith’s ability to leap backwards into the air. Only this time, I was the one flipping. I let out a “woohoo” as Sun gripped me a little tighter on the head. I landed perfectly on my feet and created a weave where the guys were standing. “I love this game!” I yelled back to them.

I started jogging toward the base again where I swiped right on my menu. In a burst of light, I transformed back into myself. I hit the little blue button again and thought of how I might be able to make my build. But when I did, my build was already listed under Neith. Apparently it now defaulted to your custom build, and I was level 20. “Perfect.”

I jogged – that was all my movement speed basically allowed – toward the Fire Giant. Leaving the base, I transformed again. That was going to take some getting used-to. When I got there, Chase was getting tossed into the air. “Hey Chase!” I called to him.

“Hey there,” he said, dully. The voice came from Sylvannus, not Grover. It was pretty weird to see him as a decrepit old man riding a tree. He stopped fighting and steered Grover toward me. “Like your new pet, too?” he gestured to the monkey on my shoulder.

“I _love_ it.” I said, petting under Sun’s chin again. He closed his eyes, seeming to enjoy it. “How you liking yours?”

“Are you kidding? I ride a _tree_.” he said, patting Grover. “I’m gonna build movement speed in a bit and race Morgan.”

“You’re gonna lose,” I said.

He laughed a little maniacally. “We’ll see about that. Oh, Melody is over by the minions, I believe. She’s excited to see you.”

“I figured. Alright, go back to your movement speed tree.” I said, rolling my eyes. He cackled again.

“See ya.”

I jogged back to the base, transforming back to myself, and leaving the base I transformed back. I shook my head when I left feeling a little disoriented. “I think I need to do that a little slower,” I said mostly to myself. Sun seemed to nod to me. “You can understand me?” He chirped. “Well, alright! I’ve got a little friend.” He jumped up and down on my shoulder, excitedly.

“Nick!” Melody called to me. She was swinging her shovel – as Beach Babe Aphrodite – at the minions. When she cleared the wave, she glided over to me and hugged me.

“Hey girl,” I said, hugging her back.

“How’s school been?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you since you left!”

“I know,” I said. “It’s been okay, I guess.”

“Hey, don’t do that,” she said, lightly touching my arm. Then she noticed Sun. “You have the monkey too! Can I pet him?”

“Sure. He likes chin scratches.”

She leaned over and pet him under the chin.

“What’s his name?”

I smirked. “Sun.”

“Niiiiiick….” she said scolding me for the joke. “He’s so cute though.”

“I know. I still can’t get over the powers though!”

“Have you tried them all out yet?”

“Just the backflip.”

She took my hand. “Well what are you waiting for?! Let’s go get Ra.”

“Ross and Morgan are already there, though.”

“Then we harass them until they pick something else to fight.”

I rolled my eyes as she dragged me back to the base. As she glided in, her body burst into pink sparkles and she transformed back to her usual self. As she spun around to watch me transform, her long, brown wavy hair swung in her face. “Isn’t that so cool?” Her freckled cheeks met her brown eyes as she beamed at me.

“It could take some getting used to,” I said, holding my head.

“Yeah, well you’ve probably been bouncing between camps too much. We did that at first too and quickly found out that you can make yourself sick that way.”

“Thanks for the heads up. A little late for that.”

She waved the comment away. “You’re fine. If I can handle it, so can you.”

We went over the edge of the Ra camp, bursting back into our gods once again and catching up to Ross and Morgan.

“Alright, it’s our turn to mess with Ra,” I said to them. Ross had just I’m-a-Monstered Ra, probably for the umpteenth time in a row. He sat there – still in monster form – getting ready for Ra to spawn again.

“Come on, Nick. That’s the twentieth time in row he’s looped it. We wanna see how many times we can do it before the first match.”

“When _is_ the first match anyway?” I asked him.

“The way this game works is that since so many people are online at once, they schedule the matches for certain times of day to ease the strain on the servers and give them a break. Our first one of the day starts soon.”

“Well then let her get some practice!” Melody said, lightly shoving Morgan’s arm. “She hasn’t gotten to practice any of her abilities yet.”

“Oh, well in that case…. Ross!” he called over to him.

Ross struck Ra again. “What?”

“Nick hasn’t gotten to try her abilities yet. The first match starts soon and she needs some practice with the controls.”

“Oh yeah….” Ross finally released the monster form and glided over to us. “You should probably practice.” He gave me a big grin.

I flicked him on the forehead. “Yeah, no kidding.” Finally, I jogged closer to Ra and took aim.

Playing like this was strange. I was actually holding the gun in my left hand; in the real world, I was right-handed. But it felt natural, and it was light enough that it was comfortable to hold exactly the way Neith did in the original version of the game. I pulled the trigger.

One shot, and half of Ra’s health was gone. I looked back at the three of them and they smiled as they watched me. I turned around and Ra was about the flash light to blind me, but I leaped backward out of the way and landed on my feet. I took aim again, only this time, I used the larger trigger just in front of the smaller one on the gun and fired the Spirit Arrow. It flew straight through him, sending him screaming into oblivion.

A few seconds later, he respawned. I crouched on the ground now, taking a deep breath. I looked down the barrel and my vision became narrowed, and I only had eyes on Ra. I fired.

He exploded again into oblivion.

I stood and looked back to my friends. “I could get used to this.” They clapped, jokingly.

Chase came up behind them, towering over them. “Guys, the match starts in ten minutes.” I swiped right on my menu. I hadn’t been keeping track of time.

“Alright, well we should all get a chance at Ra. Who hasn’t gotten to play him offensively?” I asked.

“You know I don’t play anything but support,” Melody said.

“Well, actually I haven’t,” Chase said. Ross and Morgan held out their hands, offering up Ra like a sacrifice.

“All yours, my friend,” I said, back-flipping out of his way. I landed next to Melody. “Gods, I love doing that.” She laughed and Ross groaned at the pun. Chase swiped at his menu and transformed into Mariachi Loki. A few jabs later and Ra was gone.

“So let’s talk strategy,” Ross said, his tone changing. “I think we should all play as our mains for the first match.”

I groaned. “I wanted to try Sol like this. She has my favorite powers!”

“Listen, hear me out. We don’t know how to play other gods like this yet, so I think our best bet is who we just practiced with: our mains.”

“I’m fine with that,” Melody said.

“You _only_ play Aphro,” Morgan said. She shrugged.

“So that means I’m Neith as A.D.C;” I said, “Ross is Scylla in mid, Melody is Aphro as support, Morgan is Mercury as the jungler, and Chase is solo Loki… or Chaac…. He can never pick a damn god.”

“Probably Chaac would be best for solo right now,” Morgan said. “He practiced with him earlier and really enjoyed looking like a mass murderer.” The only skin he ever played with was the Slaughterhouse skin.

“I would imagine….” I said, rolling my eyes.

“It would be good to have at least one person be kinda tanky for team fights later anyway.” Ross added.

“Five minutes remaining….” echoed the tutorial voice.

“Chase!” Ross called. Chase looked over with his knife jabbed into Ra’s stomach as he burst into light. Chase turned invisible before appearing between Melody and I, making her jump and I squeaked. He laughed at us. “Okay, so here’s the plan. You’re doing Chaac solo.” Chase smirked. “Yes, I know you love dripping with blood. Nick and Melody are in duo, Morgan is jungling and I’m in mid.”

“Are the rest of you using your mains?” he asked. Ross nodded. “Alright, hopefully we won’t get _slaughtered._ ” I snorted at his pun.

“We’re not ready for this,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “We’re gonna get fucked.”

“Probably!” Ross replied, “But hopefully, we’ll have fun doing it!”

“Yeah!” I said, laughing.

Melody laughed, saying “Oh no….”

“The match will begin shortly.” the voice said overhead.

We all went back to the base, transforming back to ourselves. Morgan stroked his clean-shaven upper lip. “Aww…. My mustache is gone….” He pulled his glasses out his pocked and put them back on. He ran a hand through his hair, checking that it was still swept up in the front.

At some point while running, Chase has transformed into Slaughterhouse Chaac and came into the base running and screaming. My eyes widened at the sight. But as he stepped into the base, he transformed in a burst of blood red sparkles and became his still-tall but lanky self. He smoothed out his light brown hair as a bowl cut and strode over to us in the center.

“Chase, you’re fucking terrifying,” Morgan said to him. Chase just laughed.

I sighed, shaking my head.

“Prepare for battle!” the voice called out.

We all looked to each other as we all launched into the air. Screaming, we all flew up, soaring through the night sky. In seconds, we were landing hard in the Order Base of a Conquest map.  All of us transformed into our respective gods as we landed.

We looked up and saw the roster over our heads. Underneath was a note that said if we wanted to see the scores, we blink hard to signal for it. It looked like Nu Wa solo, Janus mid, Rama and Athena in duo, and Thor jungle. Their mastery ranks were no higher than four.

“Ugh! I put a point in the wrong skill!” Ross complained. “How did I even do that?”

“How _did_ you do that?” I asked. “I don’t know how to raise my skills here. I started at level 20 in the base.”

“You just have to think about it,” Morgan said. “What I’m going to do is call out the skill.” From where I was standing, I couldn’t tell anything had changed. But Morgan called out an ability nodded as though it had worked.

“So if we call out the moves, it makes it easier to level them?” Melody said.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Morgan said. “I did the tutorial with Chase before you guys came on.”

Ross groaned. “I’ll remember that for next time.”

“I mean,” Chase said, “I guess that explains why when we played before, the gods would call out something along those lines.”

I nodded. “It does make sense. I guess they still wanna make it feel like the old game.”

“Let’s just go,” Ross said, rolling his eyes. We all ran – jogged, glided or whatever – to our respective camps. Ross, Melody and I jumped around the camp in anticipation.

“Minions have spawned….” the announcer declared. A few seconds later, the camp minions appeared and Ross and I kited the minions around the camp with Melody taking the aggro. Ross took his buff and headed to mid lane.

“This isn’t so bad,” I said jogging up next to Melody. I fired at the minions at the Attack Speed camp.

“It’s great,” said, beaming. “I’ve gotta play Smite more often now.” She placed a ward as we headed into the lane on the left.

I hit the line of minions in front of us with Spirit Arrow and I suddenly glowed blue. “I guess I leveled up.” I remembered what Morgan had told me before about calling out the abilities. “Back Flip!”

“It’s not too hard to control,” Melody mused, swinging her staff. “Here come the other duo laners.”

I looked down the lane and saw Rama and Athena. “The Athena might be a problem but Rama is pretty easy to deal with.”

“Mhmm.”

We continued firing basic attacks at the minions until the line was clear. Our minion wave approached the tower and Rama came out, firing at them. I realized their first mistake pretty quickly: they didn’t have a buff on Rama.

Athena lunged forward through the minion wave but not killing them. She ended up right in my line of fire. I shot a Spirit Arrow at her and followed it up with some basic attacks. She turned to run away, but then I used Back Flip and gold shot at me as she rode into the air. “FIRST BLOOD!”

“Woohoo!” I called out.

“Guess the Athena won’t be a problem then.”

“Guys,” I heard Ross’ voice in my ear, “what the hell was that Athena thinking?”

“No idea,” I said. “But Rama is wide open now.” He was standing under tower, firing at the minions he could reach. Athena would spawn again in a few seconds. “Spirit Arrow!” I called out, leveling up again. Melody had leveled too. We ran closer to the tower, and Melody kissed Rama when he was in front of the tower. I shot him with a few basic attacks and the Spirit Arrow again, Melody following it up with Love Birds. With his back turned, I got the last shot off of him, and he was dead. Gold shot at us again as I used Unravel to regain some health.

“Girl! Look at you!” Melody said, laughing. “I’m gonna go back a grab some stuff.”

“Alrighty, I’ll do what I can with this tower.”

A few seconds later, “AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN” rang out around us. Overhead, we could see the username of the Janus player crossed out in red and Scylla circled in blue.

“What the hell was he doing?” I heard Ross laughing. “He just ran into the wave of my minions, used his portal, and I Crushed him as I landed!”

“I dunno,” Morgan said now. “Like what the fuck is with this Nu Wa in solo? I mean like….”

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“She’s just dumb….” he finished after the kill. We all burst out laughing.

“I mean, really though. How did she expect to get a kill off of you?” A few seconds later and the announcer rang out again with the death of Thor. Chase had killed him this time.

“Oh look, we’re playing a bot match,” Morgan said, jokingly. “They must’ve thought we could get some more practice before the real matches start up.”

“No, they’re actually people,” Ross explained. “They’re just really bad!”

I laughed. “We know. He’s just being an asshole.” Chase laughed at him.

“ _We know….”_ Ross mimicked me.

“Not nice!” I called to him. I Back Flipped as Athena came back into lane with a quarter of the tower down. She taunted me toward her but had underestimated my strength, yet again. I was level five by the time she grabbed me, so I shot her a few times, used Spirit Arrow, and her health was down to a quarter. I out-leveled her by two now. “Fire away!” I called out. I released the World Weaver at full charge, killing her yet again. Now I was 3 to 0.

“Nick!” Melody called out from behind me. She used her Kiss and latched on again.

“Thanks girl,” I said back. We followed the minions into the tower again, taking it down.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!” Morgan’s name appeared above us.

“That was mine!” Ross yelled at him.

“No, no…. You can have this one,” and two seconds later, another death became visible overhead.

“Alright….” Ross said.

“How much time is on the clock?” Chase asked.

“We’re about eight and a half minutes in,” Melody said. I blinked hard and saw the timer above the scoreboard.

“Think they’ll surrender their first match at ten?” Ross asked.

The first enemy tower went down. “YOUR TEAM HAS DETROYED A MIDDLE ENEMY TOWER!”

I continued looking at the scoreboard when I noticed something. “Guys, they’re not in a clan… any of them.”

“They’re probably new then,” Chase suggested.

“Aww man, they’re never gonna want to play again after this stomping,” Morgan said.

“There’s probably a lot of new players without clans since the virtual reality release,” I said.

“You’re probably right.” Ross added.

“I’m gonna fall back,” I told Melody. I backed up and thought about going back. The timer appeared at my ankles and the yellow circle at my feet. In a few seconds, I was dropped back at the base.

“YOUR TEAM HAS DESTROYED A RIGHT ENEMY TOWER!” I swiped at my menu and picked up the items I was looking for. I brought up a few wards before checking the scoreboard again. There weren’t even twenty seconds left.

I crouched down and looked around the map through the World Weaver. I locked onto a target and fired.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“A warning would have been nice,” Morgan said.

“Sorry, I’m getting a little too excited for my own good.”

“We know,” Ross said, sighing.

I laughed. Oh relax, you’ll get your chance to maul people next match.

Then, a translucent screen appeared in front of me, showing me their Titan falling with the victory music ringing out.

“Not surprised,” Ross said.

A few seconds later, we were transported back the lobby where we all stood on a black platform as our gods with the other team.

“Well this is awkward,” Morgan said. Chase laughed.

“Whelp, I guess we need some practice, huh?” said the Athena.

“Yeah….” Chase said.

“You’ll get better,” Ross said. “It just takes time. We’ve been playing for a long time.”

“Oh, okay!” the Rama said. “This is our first day. How’s the switch from the original version to the virtual one?”

“It hasn’t been bad at all,” I said. “There’s some quirky things to get used to, but it’s pretty awesome.”

Nu Wa nodded. “Thanks for not going easy on us though. Now we know how hard it can be.”

“We’re just scrubs,” Morgan said. “We’re not even in the league.”

“That just makes us want to do better.” said the Janus. “Thanks for a good match.” He smiled at us.

“No problem,” I said, smiling.

They all started swiping at their menus and clicking to go back to the main login screen.

At first, nothing happened.

Then Rama spoke up. “Guys, I can’t get back to the main screen.”

“Neither can I.” said the Athena. “I was the first one to hit the button I think.”

“That’s weird….” Morgan said.

“Let me try,” Melody said. She swiped at the menu and disappeared into the sky after she pressed the button.

“Our team can, apparently,” I said. I swiped at my menu and was about to click the button.

“Wha- what’s happening?!” the Athena shouted. I looked up from my menu and my eyes widened. Starting from her feet, Athena slowly was bursting into particles. She wasn’t being thrown into the sky like Melody had. The particles were different from the god transformation; these ones were bright greens and blues, swirling around her, picking up pace and traveling up her body.

“Carter!” the Rama yelled. He started to run over to her but then stopped. He froze, no longer able to move his feet. He was turning to particles too.

I threw Ross a panicked look. All he could do was scare in horror.

Within a few seconds, the rest of the team was burning up in particles. Finally, the Athena disappeared followed by Rama and then the others. There was silence for a few seconds.

“What the fuck was that?!” Chase was the first to react.

Morgan blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Did they just explode? Is that what happens when you lose?”

“That was brutal….” Ross said trailing off.

“Guys….” I said slowly. “Why would they have a death animation… _after_ the match?” Everyone just looked at each other and shrugged. “And another thing…. How do we play other types of matches if they’re all preset?” More shrugging from everyone.

“We better go,” Morgan said. “Melody’s waiting for us at the main screen.” He swiped on his menu and took off. The rest of us did the same.

When we landed on the platform, we realized we weren’t at the main screen. We were back in the jungle practice in human form again.

“Finally you guys are here.” Melody ran up to us. “It won’t let me go to the main screen. And I checked the logout menu… there is no button to return to lobby… or even exit the game.”

“That can’t be right.” Ross pulled up his menu and – to his bewilderment – there was no exit game button.

“That’s not the weirdest part, though.” Chase added. “The people we just fought just disappeared. Like, there was a kind of death animation for them.”

Melody furrowed her eyebrows. “Why would they do that after the match?”

My breath caught. I sank to my knees.

“Nick?” Ross turned to me and walked over. “What’s wrong?”

“I…. Before…. Before they were gone…. I friended the Athena. She was really nice…. I thought we could teach them some stuff….”

“Okay….” Ross said slowly.

“She’s offline.”

“Well then she must have found the logout button and we’re just scrubs,” Morgan said, laughing with Chase.

“I…. I don’t know….” I said, trailing off. I looked up at Ross.

“I know what you’re thinking. That’s impossible.”

“What’s impossible?” Chase asked.

Then Melody clasped her hands over her mouth, finally realizing what I was saying.

Morgan put a hand on her shoulder. “Guys, what’s going on?” He finally held a serious tone.

“They haven’t seen the anime.” Melody said, shaking her head. “The only time we’ve ever seen anything like this….”

“Just tell us,” Morgan said.

“Welcome to Smite!” said the British woman’s voice once again. It was the tutorial voice, and the Smite theme music played.

“Why is it playing this again?” said Chase.

“Congratulations to the winners of your first match! You will all be moving on to round two!”

Ross and I looked at each other.

The voice continued. “Those that have failed have been permanently logged out. They will no longer be a problem.” She voice paused for a few seconds. No one said anything. “They have proven they are not fit for this world: the world of the gods! Each of you have been selected by purchasing the new virtual headset designed for Smite. You have survived and proven your dedication.”

“The fuck does that mean?!” Morgan yelled.

“Yeah, seriously,” Chase added.

The voice continued again. “The rules are simple. If your team loses, the party is defeated and leaves this world and the real world alike. If you team manages to defeat the other, your team moves on. You are free to live out your lives in your team’s base, the Jungle Practice. You will fight again tomorrow, but you have off on the weekends! Practice hard and you may prove to be gods yourselves! Good luck!” The music stopped.

“We’re… stuck here?” Chase asked slowly.

“That isn’t the worst part.” I said, standing up now. I looked around to everyone. “We just killed people. We killed five people. And we’re going to have to kill five people a day to survive.”

“We’re gonna fucking _die_.” Morgan said. “We’re not good! We’re not even near pros!”

“It’s either staying alive by killing or quitting now and surrendering the next match,” Ross said. “We can’t just give up.”

“But do you really want to play this game knowing you’re killing people?” Melody said.

Silence.

I sighed. I put my hands together in a small prayer. “I just hope they’re alright.” We weren’t a religious group in the slightest, but everyone either nodded, bowed their heads or put their hands together.

Finally, we all looked up at each, not knowing what to do.

“I can’t do this,” Melody said.

“I don’t want to kill people either,” Ross said, shaking his head.

I shut my eyes tight to not let the tears fall. I sucked in a breath. “We don’t have a choice.”


	2. Match 2: Ross

_ Match 2: Ross _

The one game mechanic that changed from the original game that I was thankful for was the time of day.

That night, we all slept together in a tight circle. We all knew – but never said – that all we had was each other in this.

Being the one with sleep apnea, I watched as the rest of the group fell asleep. Nick was the first one out, and I held her close to me, stroking her hair to help her feel safe.

I didn’t know what else to do. When it came to game strategy, I was the one yelling at everyone – jokingly – to drop a ward once in a while. I was the one telling people to group up, split push, or attack the phoenix. I had no idea how we were going to survive.

Our group wasn’t bad at the game; it was just that we needed a lot more practice than we had. With Melody being scared of any other position and Morgan and I competing for the solo position once in a while, I knew we could use all the help we could get.

I slowly pulled away from Nick and let the rest of the group sleep. My menu rang quietly as I motioned for it to open up. I selected Awilix in the Renegade skin and ran to where the Fire Giant was sleeping.

_…_

When I woke up, Nick was sitting at my side. Or rather, Buccaneith was. I shot upright and looked around frantically.

She put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s alright, it’s still early.” she said. “Were you up all night?”

“Yeah…. I wanted to make sure I was ready for today.”

Nick sighed. “We need you rested, not overworking yourself.”

“You know I can’t sleep anyway….” I trailed off. “I’m going to do what I can to protect everyone.”

“This isn’t on you, Ross. You know that.”

“Aren’t I the one that introduced you guys to the game?” I shook my head. “I’m the one that’s killed all of us.”

“Aren’t I the one that bought you the headset for your birthday?” she asked. I looked up at her, and her face was grim.

“This isn’t your fault, Nick.”

“It’s not yours either.”

I sighed. Nick held out her hand and I took it with her helping me up. It was funny how all of my characters seemed to be mostly shorter than Nick’s. Neith was a good few inches over Awilix.

“So is your plan to jungle today?” she asked. “Who would do what, then?”

“Let’s go back to the base to talk to everyone.” I said. Nick nodded. We jogged back over, and everyone was slowly waking up. We phased back to our human forms as we stepped into the base.

“Found him?” Morgan sat, standing up and stretching. He put his glasses back on.

“He was over by the Fire Giant. He apparently has an idea for today’s match.”

Everyone turned to me. “Well, I was practicing with Awilix all night. I was thinking about switching up the team a bit.”

“Is that really such a good idea?” Chase asked. “You do realize our lives are at stake here… right?”

I coughed. “Yes, Chase, I am well aware.” He coughed and looked away. “I was thinking that everyone can use their best or second-best characters, and I’ll be able to guide us a little better as the jungler.”

Morgan nodded. “That could work. So I’ll do Chronos in solo?”

“Yeah. Chase, you do Kulkulkan in mid, and Melody and Nick are in the duo lane as Aphrodite and Neith.”

“Sounds good to me,” Melody said.

Nick thought for a minute before speaking. “Chase, are you up for doing mid lane?”

He nodded. “I can pull it off. I’ll play a lot more defensively this time. I promise.”

“Alright….” I said, carefully. “Let’s get to work then. Chase, you go fight Ra as Kulkulkan. Morgan, head to the Fire Giant. Nick and Melody, work on clearing minion waves, and then we’ll rotate. I’ll bounce between camps trying to move as fast as possible.”

Everyone started to pick out their gods on their menus and head toward their camps. Morgan stayed behind.

“Yo…” he said, trying to form what he wanted to say, “do you really think we’ll make it? You know… like, through at least part of this death match?”

“I really don’t know. Honestly, I’m just in it now to protect you guys. I’m going to keep fighting to keep you all alive.”

“Can you believe our girlfriends are stuck here too? Isn’t it bad enough that we could die here?”

“I’m trying not to think about that,” I said, watching Nick run off to the minion camp.

_…_

We knew that the last match had started at 12 o’clock in the afternoon. It was now 11:30 and everyone was breaking a sweat.

As Awilix, I ran in and out of camps on Suku’s back as fast as I could. I hadn’t built up movement speed; I was using my usual build for her. But I wanted to see if I could push the limits of the game in order to be better. I didn’t have any luck.

Finally, I went back to the base and sat down. I knew we were in for a rough match. The other team would be fighting for their lives… just like us.

Chase came into the base just then and walked over. “You alright?”

“Yeah… just thinking.”

He was silent for a second too long. “What about?”

“How we’re gonna die.”

“Yeah….”

I shook my head. “We don’t stand a chance.”

Chase was silent for a minute, but then he sat next to me, pulling his knees to his chest. “We could just surrender today. We’ll make it quick and we can all go together.”

“I can’t do that either,” I said, still not looking at him.

“You don’t want her to die.” he stated. “You don’t even care about making it out alive, do you?”

“No… I don’t.”

Chase mused for a minute before speaking. “Do you think she cares about making it out alive?”

I thought for a minute. “I would hope so….”

“I think that she might be feeling the same thing you are.”

I shook my head. “I’d rather die here over her. I just want her and everyone else to be safe.”

Chase chuckled. “I bet you she’d say the same thing.”

Just then, Morgan phased into the base with us. He took out his glasses and put them back on. “Yo… I saw you weren’t running around the camps anymore,” he said, walking over to us. He sat down on my left.

“We were just talking about stuff.” I said dismissively.

“Yeah…. I’m worried too,” Morgan said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head and then sigh. “We’re not gonna make it out of this.”

“We have to try,” I said. “I won’t just let everyone die here.”

I saw Chase and Morgan eye each other.

Nick and Melody came over then and phased into their human forms. Nick came over and knelt down in front of me. She took my hands in hers. I looked up finally, and she was smiling. It was a small smile, but it was there nonetheless.

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Hey….” she said slowly. “Any luck yet?” She knew I was trying to break the physics of the game.

I shook my head. She squeezed my hands a little tighter. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to.” she said softly. She sighed. “It’s not up to you to win. We have to work together.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” I said. She gave my hands another squeeze.

“Nope, not allowed,” she said. “I’m the one that’s supposed to be the worry wart, remember?” She smiled again. This time, it was more genuine. I felt my chest tighten a bit.

“Yeah, but I have a lot to actually worry about this time.”

I noticed Melody had sat in our little circle too. Her knees were pulled close to her chest. “Nick’s right. She’s the one that’s supposed to be paranoid.” She smirked slightly as if trying to make herself feel more comfortable with the situation.

“Yeah man,” Morgan added. “That’s how you guys work, you know that.”

“Not this time. It’s my fault you all are here. I introduced you all to the game.”

“Ross,” Chase said, “it’s not your fault that we continued to play it. We all fell in love with the game to at least some extent.  It’s our own faults we’re here.”

“It’s no one’s fault,” Nick said. “We play video games together. It’s just what we do. We all love it. We just… got really unlucky this time.”

“We should have known.” Melody spoke up. “Virtual reality… a game where you fight to the death… the plot being a war between gods…. It was so obvious we would be sucked into a real war.”

No one said anything for a while.

“Ten minute remaining….” The tutorial voice broke the silence.

“I could punch that fucker….” Morgan said.

“But that’s how all games work,” Chase added. “Going back to what Melody said here…. The plot is always some kind of war… some sort of…” his hands made a swirling gesture, “chaos not supposed to be there. That’s how a conflict is created for a world like this.” He stopped for a second before he realized. “I mean… a game….”

Nick swallowed hard before speaking. “No, you’re right. It is a world. This is where we’re going to live out at least part of our lives for a while.”

“Don’t you get it?” I said louder now. I pulled my hands away. “This isn’t a matter of getting out. We don’t have the teamwork to make it out of here. We’ve only ever won matches when the other team sucked. We don’t know how to work together. We win by pure luck.”

“I think we could have something they don’t. We have faith in each other, don’t we?” She looked around to everyone. Their heads were down and they avoided her eyes. “Not just about the game guys. We’ve been through a lot together.” At this, they all nodded or shrugged. “Would we have stayed friends when we went away to school if we didn’t?”

“Of course we’d stay friends,” Melody said.

“But my point is that we care that much about each other. We have faith in our friendships to make it last.” She took my hands again. “We have to let that hold us together for as long as we can.”

“This is pretty ironic coming from you,” Chase said to her.

Now it was my turn to squeeze her hands. She took a shaky breath. “This whole thing has given me a new will to fight or something, I guess.”

“Five minutes remaining….” the voice called again.

“Let’s say we do win,” I said, “by some stupid miracle. Then what? We keep killing people just like that?”

“We have to if we want to stay alive,” Morgan said.

I shook my head.

Nick gave my hands another squeeze. I looked up at her. “None of us like it. But it’s what we have to do.”

I looked into her eyes. Her eyes were watery but only I noticed. She held my gaze and I wondered if she knew what I was trying to tell her.

Finally, I broke my gaze and stood up. I took a deep breath. “If we’re going to do this, we need to be in it together. No hesitations and no doubting. That stops here.” I looked around and everyone was looking to me, nodding.

“No more whining, damn wimps,” Morgan said. Chase chuckled.

“Alright,” Melody said, smirking but nervously. “I’ll just try to keep my paralyzed fear to a minimum.”

Morgan put a hand on her shoulder. “You got this.”

“ _We_ got this,” Nick corrected.

I sighed and looked to Nick. “I love you.”

She smiled a sad smile. “I love you too.”

“The match will begin shortly.”

We all looked around at each other before being launched into the sky.

Once we got to the match, we all looked up at the screen showing what we were facing. The mastery ranked ranged from three to seven. Ours ranged from five to ten.

“Remember kids,” Morgan said, “just because their ranks are lower, doesn’t mean we’re better.”

“And we’re probably not,” Chase added.

“Didn’t we _just_ say to stop being negative?” I said. “Come on guys.” I took off on Suku to the speed camp. In a few seconds, Morgan was at my side.

“Guys, we just need to take a few breaths,” Melody’s voice said in our ears. I looked around the side of the speed camp for an ambush. I dropped a ward just in case. “Just stick together and don’t chase kills.”

“You heard that, right Chase?” Morgan said.

“Don’t worry, I know what’s at stake.” he retorted.

“Minions have spawned….”

I held my breath.

A few seconds later, they spawned and I leapt off of Suku. I grabbed the speed buff and headed over to the mana camp with Chronos. We cleared it pretty quickly.

“Let’s grab the mid furies,” I told him. He nodded and we headed over. By that point, I was halfway to level three.

“Nice,” Morgan said. “I’m gonna head over to the lane.”

“I’m gonna help out Chase in mid.” We parted ways and I met up with Kukulkan in lane. “You’re up against an Isis, right?”

“Yeah… I don’t know how I’m gonna hold up.”

“You will,” I said. “I’ll camp out in your lane a lot.” I spoke up a little bit. “How are you and Melody doing, Nick?”

“We’re okay, we might actually manage a-”

“FIRST BLOOD!” Morgan’s name appeared above us with the Bellona crossed out.

“A kill….” Nick finished.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!” A few seconds later, Sobek appeared above us. But it was Melody’s name that appeared.

“Sorry Nick! It was the doves,” she said.

“Seagulls!” I called out. Chase snorted out loud. I got a chuckle out of Morgan and Nick.

“Whatever!” Melody snapped back. “I know you’re not a fan of Beach Babe, okay?”

“ _Text me!”_  Morgan shouted in a shrill voice. Chase burst out laughing at this and Melody giggled.

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!” Nick’s name appeared in the sky.

“I had to retreat, I’m sorry!” Melody said. I heard Nick sigh.

“Just remember to warn each other when you back or retreat,” I said. I ran on Suku toward the duo lane. I killed some minions in the lane alongside Aphrodite before going for the attack speed buff. Nick came back pretty quickly and took her buff. I ran off to get some more furies. “Morgan, how’s your lane holding up?”

“I’m doing alright,” he said. His minions were headed toward the enemy tower.

“Oh guys, place some wards down. I wanna see this whole map lit up like a fuckin’ Christmas tree.” Just then, Nick placed a ward at the bottom on the duo lane and a few seconds later, the top was lit up.

“I’ll place some when I back next,” Chase said. Morgan’s lane was already lit up.

I placed two wards near the mid lane on my way over. I let my instincts take over, the ones that I’d been training for nearly the last two years. I was in the beta way back when the game first came out, and I had been practicing on and off for the first few months of release before finally getting everyone to play with me. And here we ended up. But I wasn’t about to let my guilt of dragging everyone else into this stop me from using what I’d learned in the past two years. I ganged Morgan’s lane, setting him up to kill Bellona. I ran to mid lane and set up Chase to kill Isis. I ganked the duo lane, killing Sobek, allowing Nick to take out Hou Yi after Melody stunned him.

Nick screamed and jumped up and down. “That was so perfect!” she squealed. “Look at the map guys!” I swiped at my menu as I rode Suku to the enemy attack speed camp. The first enemy mid lane tower was down, the first enemy duo lane tower was about halfway, and Morgan was firing at the second enemy solo tower. On our end, the first duo lane tower was only about halfway down, both mid lane towers were up with minor damage to the first one, and the solo lane tower was untouched. In the time I’d been bouncing between lanes, Morgan had gotten another kill and Nick landed another ultimate on Isis to help Chase secure the kill.

As I ran back to a safe area, I noticed a red health bar too close for comfort. I turned around to see the rest of their team behind me.

“Guys, Gold Fury!” I launched Suku into the fight with Moonlight Charge, hitting and knocking up Loki before he could disappear. In the air, Nick ulted him as I Feather Stepped, killing him. Chase sent out his ultimate, knocking back the Bellona. I took the opportunity to use Gravity Surge, pulling her back to me and killing her. All that was left was Isis.

“Ross, grab her!” Melody yelled. She stunned Isis out of her Wing Gust. I jumped back onto Suku to run as fast as I could to catch up. I knew I’d be too late for the deicide. But just then, Morgan comes out from behind her and used Time Rift to kill her.

“DEICIDE!”

“Fire Giant, GO!” I yelled, running as fast as I could on Suku. “I’ll tank it.” But by the time we got to the Fire Giant, it was too late. We had already started attacking it when Hou Yi showed up. Sobek was right behind him to defend, and Hou Yi stole the Fire Giant just as the rest of the team respawned.

“FALL BACK!” I yelled, again too late. In the mess of it all, Hou Yi ulted Nick and Melody into oblivion. Chase tried to cover our retreat but was thrown backwards into Hou Yi by Sobek and killed.

With the rest of their team now up and the Fire Giant buff, all we could do was defend. I could hear everyone’s breathing heavy as they watched the enemy team power on.

In the time that we were on defense, our first towers in the mid lane and duo lanes both fell. No one spoke through this, as there wasn’t much we could do but defend the lanes the best we could. Once the rest of us respawned, everyone went back to their respective lanes.

“Nick, Melody,” I said, “get ready for me to gank. When I say, Melody, you stun one of them. Nick, stun the other. Ready?”

“Got it,” Melody said.

“Nick?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember what you said earlier?” I asked her. “Have some faith.” She was silent. No retaliation was better than disagreeing.

We waited until they approached the second tower. They got close enough that the minions were stepping into the tower’s circle.

“Now!” I yelled. At once, Nick lined up and fired her ultimate at Hou Yi. Melody stunned Sobek. I Feather Stepped past the wall and landed on the Hou Yi. Nick followed me up with a Spirit Arrow to root and I took him out with some basic attacks.

In the meantime, Melody had landed her birds on the Sobek and got thrown out of the way. Nick Back Flipped to get between Melody and Sobek. When Sobek turned around, I was standing there and sent out Suku to knock him up. By then, Nick’s Spirit Arrow had recharged and she landed a few basic attacks to kill him.

Nick and I looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief. I nodded to her and took off on Suku.

Looking at the map again, I saw that we had three towers left to their four; we had one in each lane and they had one in each and a second in mid lane. Their towers were more weakened than ours, but we had two to go through in mid lane.

Just then, Morgan slain Bellona. With that, only Loki and Isis were left standing. I ran as fast as I could to the mid lane and hid behind the first enemy tower. Chase was coming up to the tower, and Isis was backing up. Just before I could gank her though, Loki came up behind me and used his ultimate.  Chase saw the opportunity and used his own ultimate. Just too late, I died as Chase got the double kill.

“Forget the Fire Giant and just PUSH!” I yelled to them. I watched as the duo lane took out the second tower and Chase finished getting the first mid tower. Morgan ignored me and grabbed the enemy mana buff.

“Morgan, why didn’t you push?!” I yelled.

“Don’t worry about it, I can still push it.” But Bellona would be up in just a few more seconds.

I gritted my teeth. When you died in this version of the game, it wasn’t like you were omnipresent. You essentially sat in base with a screen in front of you to view any team member you wanted, as if clicking between them. I looked back to Chase who flew to Morgan’s lane as I had been arguing with him. Together, they took down the tower as Bellona and Hou Yi showed up to lane.

Finally able to respawn, I used a teleport to get to the duo lane while Bellona and Hou Yi were occupied. Only Sobek was in the lane against Nick and Melody but I knew Loki would be coming soon. We attacked the phoenix the best we could until Loki showed up. Melody missed her stun and Nick Back Flipped out of the way. Landing her Unravel on the Broken Weave, she regained health to full before using he Spirit Arrow to root him.

I took the chance and jumped over Loki with Feather Step. I landed a few basic attacks before Melody used her birds. He ran off, but the damage over time finally killed him anyway. We took the phoenix as Sobek retreated to the base.

“Mid lane, let’s go!” I shouted, leading the way. Nick Back Flipped to follow and Melody was behind her. We took the tower quickly before Isis showed up.

“Retreat!” Nick called when she spotted her. All of us were able to run down the mid lane back under our second tower before we backed. When we got there, I looked at the map to realize that by some string of fate, Chase and Morgan had managed to nearly take out the phoenix in the solo lane. But to our dismay, Chase was killed and Morgan had to use his ultimate to escape.

Their entire team was back up again. Everyone went to their respective lanes and I went to take out the mid furies on both sides. Finally level 20, I got each buff for Nick and Morgan.

“Guys, I need everyone to buy a Teleport to God,” I told them. “Next deicide, we’re gonna backdoor the Titan… unless they’ll be up too quick. Otherwise, we’re gonna go for it.”

“Got it,” Morgan said. The three of them backed and bought the item. Chase was back up again too.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna pretend we’re going for Fire Giant after we kill Loki. Once we find him, I’ll gank him. After that, we go for Fire Giant. Activate it, but take as little damage as possible. We won’t actually go for it; it’s just a distraction.”

The next minute of the game went by slowly. The air around us felt thick, and we all knew it would be the final play. If we didn’t win the team fight, we’d lose the match.

“Loki!” Morgan yelled. I was all the way across the map when I heard it. I used my teleport to get to Morgan as he was being chased down lane. Morgan’s ultimate was down, and Loki had just used his. With Morgan at half health and running toward the phoenix, and Loki and Bellona on his tail, I jumped out from behind her and Feather Stepped her, knocking her up. In a few more basic attacks, she was down.

Loki was still running after Morgan, and I jumped back on Suku to catch up. But it was too late. Morgan was nicked by Loki’s bleed effect and was killed. I jumped in and used Gravity Surge, pulling Loki straight into the arms of death.

“Fire Giant, now!” I yelled.

“But what about Morgan?” Nick asked. “Will we still be able to trick them?”

“We have to try,” I said. When we made it to the Fire Giant, I decided I’d be the one to tank it again. I jumped in and started to attack just barely when Isis stunned me in the line of fire.

The hesitation from the stun was just too much for me. With what little health I had left, I sent Suku after Isis and Nick used her Spirit Arrow to kill her and root Sobek. Hou Yi ulted just then and I was killed.

Chase used his ultimate and sliced through Hou Yi and Sobek. They chased them almost all the way back to their base and defeated Hou Yi.

I watched in stunned silence as Nick, Melody, and Chase fought their way through the phoenix and to the Titan. Morgan was now back up and teleported to the enemy base.

In seconds, the victory music played, and their Titan collapsed.

I fell to my knees. Nick started crying, hugging Melody. Morgan breathed heavily and Chase just stared at the Titan.

A few seconds later, we were transported to the lobby. Still in the form of our gods, Nick ran to me and I caught her in my arms. It was a little funny though since Neith is a little taller than Awilix, but the effect was the same. Chase put a hand on my shoulder, and Morgan kissed Melody.

When Nick and I pulled apart, we saw the other team.

Mostly, their heads were hanging down. Some of them were crying and others just stared at the floor.

Nick and I looked at each other in stunned silence.

I wanted to walk over and shake their hands for a good match. I wanted to tell them that they gave us a run for our money. I wanted to say that when I died, I thought we were about to lose.

But instead, I stood there. I said nothing.

Finally, the Loki looked to the Bellona and they nodded. All of them seemed to have a silent agreement. They all swiped at their menus together.

“I’m sorry!” Nick yelled. Everyone looked up at her. Tears were streaming down her face.

A few seconds later, they were all vanishing. The entire team was holding hands as they faded into sparkles.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke away from Nick and ran to them.

“ _No!_ ” I reached out and missed them, falling to the floor in a splash of sparkles around me. My fists landed on the floor and I fell to my knees. I cried out, my eyes shutting tightly.

I heard boots echo on the floor around me, but I couldn’t look up. I felt a feminine hand on my back. Then another, then a man’s, followed by something scaly.

We were transported out.

_…_

When we landed, we were in the same position back in the Jungle Practice. We were all transformed into our human selves again.

I stood up and turned to them.

“We just killed them!” I shouted. I was shaking. My knuckles were white with my hands clenched into tight fists.

“We had no choice!” Nick yelled back, still crying.

“What were we supposed to do? Surrender?” Morgan asked. “This is what’s gonna happen, man.”

“We just took their lives!” I yelled again. “Aren’t you guys feeling _something_?!”

“Of course we are,” Chase said. “But if we hang on to that, it’ll drive us mad.”

“None of us want to be here,” Melody added. “But if we’re gonna make it out, then we have to win.”

“What if we can’t do it? What if we can’t take killing people?!” I yelled. It wasn’t directly at anyone in particular. I just didn’t know what else to tell them.

“If you want to surrender…” Nick said slowly, stepping forward, “then we have to decide together. You know it’s a matter of all of our lives. Not just yours.”

“I _know_ that!” I said. She stepped back, cringing at my volume. “It’s my fault! It’s my _fucking fault_ and I can’t even handle taking their lives!”

I swiped at my menu and chose Sun. I ran out of the base toward Ra. I had to get away from them. I couldn’t take the guilt anymore.

“Just give him some time,” I heard Melody say, probably to Nick. “He’ll be okay.”

I wasn’t sure if she was right anymore.


	3. Match 3: Melody

_ Match 3: Melody _

To say that I was in shock… was an understatement.

After the match had ended, I was shaking. I didn’t think that anyone had noticed until Morgan came up to me and held my hand after Ross had taken off without Nick. I was proud of myself for trying to console her because I knew it wasn’t easy for her to see him like that….

But it was my turn to be the one that really needed the comforting… but at first I tried not to show it.

After Ross left us standing there, we were all silent for a while. Nick had sat down where he left her and hugged her knees to her chest. Though she didn’t make a sound, I could see the small sobs shaking her.

Chase didn’t seem to want to talk about it either. He went over to where Nick was and just sat with her. He didn’t make a move to touch her or talk, but his presence seemed to help ease the sobs.

As for Morgan and I, we sat in a far corner against one of the archways. Our backs were to the wall, and we didn’t say anything for a long time. He seemed to sigh a lot and rub his face absentmindedly. He didn’t seem to even remember I was sitting next to him.

I sat with my head against the wall behind me and just stared up at the ceiling. I felt hollow. I was guilty. We had just murdered people, and yet I felt nothing but empty inside.

I was surprised at myself for not crying. Usually, I was a pretty openly emotional person, crying when I got into conflict with Morgan or the few times with Nick. But this was different. This wasn’t about being upset or disappointed in the people closest to me.

This was about hating myself for what I’d done.

Finally, Morgan spoke up. I felt his eyes on me but didn’t look over. “What do we do?” he said with a slight shrug.

I continued staring up at the ceiling. “What can we do?” I replied, numbly.

He sighed again and put a hand on my arm. “Hey…. I don’t mean that….” He said it as if I had misunderstood. I looked over at him now with a blank expression. He gave me a slight cock of his eyebrow. “I meant…. How can we help everybody stay together?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean?” I said slowly.

“I mean….” He looked around for a minute before continuing. “I don’t know. If we’re going to survive here, even another day… we need to start being more of a support system rather than tearing each other down like this.”

I looked around, remembering how we had all kind of split off in different directions earlier. Ross had come back over, and Nick was leaning her head against his shoulder. Chase was sitting off to the side but within a decent proximity. We were on the other side of the base.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of being a support system or even working together,” I said. “I think we just haven’t ever dealt with… grief _together_.”

“Hmmm,” he mused. He stood up and held out a hand to me. I took it and pulled myself up with his help. When I was upright, he kissed me on the forehead. I allowed a small smile to make its way onto my face but didn’t feel the same flush I expected to. We walked over to where the others were sitting and made a lop-sided circle with the others. They looked up at us as we sat but didn’t say anything.

“Guys…. I think we need to figure something out here,” Morgan said. “We can’t just sit here and not talk about what happened.” I looked at them as Morgan spoke and I saw them all look to each other and to me.

Nick nodded. “He’s right. We really don’t have time to grieve… or bask in guilt for that matter.”

“I’m fine,” Ross said suddenly. We all looked to him and he continued. “I don’t need to talk about it, but I’ll listen and give advice best I can.” Everyone seemed to nod or shrug. It was a start, at least.

“I’m in shock.” I said. Everyone looked to me and I felt my stomach drop. I didn’t know if I could be the one to start the conversation. I didn’t know why I had spoken up. Then it suddenly clicked for me when I looked back at them….

I was willing to speak up if it meant that I was helping my friends.

“Me too,” Chase said too. I looked over to him, not fully understanding. “I mean…. You guys know how I am,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t do the whole…” he swung his hands around as he tried to form the right words, “lovely-dovey thing. But as much as I love Slaughterhouse Chaac and stabbing characters with Loki’s daggers…. It’s different now. They’re not characters anymore…. I’m killing the people playing the characters if not directly, at least indirectly.”

Silence.

Nick spoke up again. “I’ve always wanted to escape to a virtual reality,” she said. “I thought anything was better than the reality we lived in. I hated where I was….” She trailed off.

“Me too,” Morgan said now. “I had no direction. Didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and all I could think about was when I’d be done with work or school for the day, and that’s not much motivation to finish anything.” At this, Ross nodded.

Everyone fell silent again for a few minutes. No one really knew what to say. Regardless of what our situation had become in the time we were here, the truth had finally been said out loud.

We all _wanted_ to be there. Whether or not we wanted to stay there was a bit different.

“I think that it doesn’t matter what our lives were like in the real world,” I said. I surprised myself again for speaking up, but this time I didn’t stop when everyone looked my way. “I think that we really have to become what we want to be here. I think we’re making a difference by staying strong and pushing on. If we beat ourselves up over it every single time we win, our guilt will eat us alive.”

“She’s right,” Ross said. “We have to learn to move on every day. Every match is going to affect us in some way, but we can’t let every match really defeat us.”

Nick put a hand on his shoulder. She gave him a look I didn’t recognize but no one else seemed to catch it.

_…_

Later that night, we all huddled in the middle of the base after practicing some more. We decided to switch up the team again tomorrow and had practiced with those gods after our little pep talk.

Nick and I were still in the duo lane as Neith and Aphrodite, but Ross would take mid as Scylla, Chase would take solo as Chaac, and Morgan would jungle as Mercury.

From where I was sitting, I could feel Morgan’s tension across the circle. There was something not quite right about the way he spoke since we decided on the team for the next match, but I was the only one that noticed.

Nick and I were sitting together while the boys talked about a show they had seen a few days ago. We didn’t really know what to talk about so we just enjoyed each other’s company.

“Hey Nick….” I said slowly. She turned to me. “Did Morgan seem… off earlier?”

She tilted her head. “Off how?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it was just me. But did he seem a little… nervous maybe? You know, about the match tomorrow?”

She contorted her mouth awkwardly. “Well I think we all are to some extent. Did he seem worse than the last one?”

“Yeah…. Do you think it’s because he’s jungling this time?”

She nodded. “I definitely think jungling has a lot more pressure than any of the other roles. I don’t know if he was prepared for Ross to pass him the baton, so to speak.”

“Yeah….”

“Well I mean I think you have one of the most important roles consistently too.”

I turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, there’s a lot of pressure on you to keep me alive. We know how everyone always blames the jungler for losing, but the support role has to keep the A.D.C. alive. And if they can’t, then the duo lane can’t get pushed, and those on the other team can wander. It causes huge problems later on for the mid lane too, and then the jungler has to gank mid a lot more often.”

As she spoke, my eyes widened. I swallowed hard. “I never really thought of it like that.”

“Well we all make fun of you for picking the same role all the time. But honestly, I think that saying the role is boring is an excuse. I like playing support sometimes when you’re not online. I think the real reason is because people are scared to have that pressure on them. But you take it and handle it like a champ! ...You know, albeit screaming when you’re being chased.” At her last comment, she smirked at me.

“Well you do your fair share of screaming too!”

She laughed at me and shook her head. “Not saying I don’t!” She smiled at me and I smiled back.

“I think that I still have a lot to learn though,” I said. “It’s not a secret that I don’t play as often as everyone else.”

Nick nodded. “Honestly, I think you’re going to have to learn a new _role_ eventually.”

“What? Why?” I asked quickly.

“Well, I mean it would make sense. If the team gets too comfortable doing the same roles over and over, we could be matched up with a team that shakes things up as far as what characters they pick for certain roles and stuff... like changing the meta to throw us off our game. We could end up with a really bad matchup if we constantly follow the meta of the game before all of this happened.”

I swallowed hard.

“I mean, I never said you had to pick a different _god_ though. You could easily transition to solo lane as Aphrodite, you know.”

I thought about it for a few seconds. “How would I even build that though?”

“It would probably be more similar to the way Morgan plays Chronos. Just ask him for pointers on the build. You know he’d help you.”

I hesitated. “But I don’t want to bring it up to him. If I say that, they might think I want to change roles.”

“I’m not saying you have to bring it up now. But he might not take it that way, either.”

“Yeah….”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted,” Nick said. She leaned back and stretched before curling up on her side. “You wanna try to get some sleep?”

“I’m tired too.” I leaned back and put my arms behind my head. The guys were still talking across the base from us, but I saw them see that we were getting ready to sleep.

“Don’t overthink it,” Nick tried to say as she yawned. I understood the gist of it though. “We’ll work on the role swap with you. It’ll be okay.” She started to close her eyes.

“Yeah….” Nick was already asleep when the boys walked over. Ross curled up behind her and hugged her into his chest. Chase fell asleep off to the side, pulling his sweatshirt over his legs in a ball.

Morgan came over and laid down next to me, patting his chest. I rolled over and onto him, laying with my head tucked onto his shoulder and my one arm around him.

It took me a long time after everyone else was out to finally fall asleep.

_…_

I woke up a little confused. When I looked around, everyone was still asleep. Usually I was the one to sleep the longest, but I guessed that my cycle was thrown off by how long it took me to fall asleep in the first place.

At some point in the night, Morgan had rolled over and left me to curl up in a ball, so pulling away from him was easy. I started toward Ra and got to the edge of the base, swiping at my menu.

“Hey….” I jumped and spun around to see Nick there, rubbing her arms. The morning air was a little more brisk than by the time the matches started. She rubbed her eyes. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” she whispered. “Did you wanna practice together?”

I hesitated and looked back at my menu, selecting Aphrodite. “Yeah, sure.”

Nick narrowed her eyes at the crack in my voice, but she didn’t pursue it. She swiped at her menu instead and picked out Neith. We both went over to Ra and I attached myself to Nick. She went at Ra head on and took a lot of damage. I had to heal her before she could kill him.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, and she seemed to read my thoughts as she added, “Just a little stressed is all.”

“I mean, we definitely all are.”

Nick shrugged. “We all have a lot at stake here. But I think that I could be a deficit to us in ability.”

“Why?” I asked a little too quickly. “You’re our best A.D.C.” She gave me a knowing look. I raised an eyebrow at her. “What? Are you talking about how things are going at school?” At this, she looked down and nodded. Sun seemed to sense the sudden change in attitude and put a small hand on her cheek. She touched his hand with her finger and patted his head. I glided over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Nick…. I know this isn’t exactly a great alternative… but I mean, you’re surrounded by your friends here. You have us now. There’s no need for you to feel like that.”

She looked up at me and shook her head. “What if I can’t change? What if I don’t have enough motivation to try? I don’t want to be the reason we _all_ die.”

I squeezed her shoulder. “No.” I said firmly. “You _know_ that’s not how you really feel. You’re determined to protect everyone here as much as the rest of us are. You know that.”

She sighed and nodded slightly. “I just don’t want to cause any problems.”

“You _won’t._ And you know Ross wouldn’t want to hear you talk like that.”

“I know,” she said quickly, “I just needed to get it out of my head, I guess.”

“It’s okay,” I said, turning her slightly to face me. “You’re gonna be great.” I put my arms out wide and she wrapped her arms around me.

“Thank you,” she said into my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I said again.

After a while, we battled Ra with more force than before, doing the best we could to defeat him as quickly as possible. We tried a few combinations and timing our abilities together and most of them seemed to work. Eventually, we practiced with the others to take out the Fire Giant faster and found a way for one of us to stand guard while the rest of us fought it.

“Ten minutes remaining….” the now-ominous voice of the tutorial called. My stomach tightened.

“Is everyone ready?” Ross asked as we made our way back to the base.

Everyone looked at him with varied expressions of confusion. Chase spoke up and said, “As in to die or as we’ll ever be?”

“I think he meant just for this next match,” I said. Chase let out a small chuckle and I smiled.

We talked about some of our strategies we used on the Fire Giant and we discussed some of the combinations Nick and I tried, and the guys seemed impressed.

“It’s not like we haven’t used them before,” Nick added. “We just haven’t practiced them outside of a match, really.”

“I guess that’s one benefit to living in the Jungle Practice,” Morgan said with a shrug.

“The match will start momentarily….”

We all looked to each other before being shot into the air just seconds later.

We arrived in the base of the Chaos side and when we looked up at the view of the matchup. Their mastery levels were close to ours, and some of their icons were for mastering large numbers of gods. I swallowed hard.

“Remember, mastery levels don’t mean anything,” Ross said.

“I beg to differ,” I said.

“I mean, I have mastery ten on Nu Wa and I’m _still_ not amazing with her,” Nick said. This produced a small snort from Chase.

“Exactly,” Morgan said. “Just do what you do and we’ll be fine.”

All of us picked out our items to start with and made our way to the camps. I picked my doves to use first – seagulls in my case – and the match started.

I released my birds on the minions and took the majority of the damage. I popped a health potion as Ross took the damage buff and Nick and I made our way over to the attack speed camp.

Nick kited the minions a little more than usual, taking some decent damage. I healed her with the birds as we ran into the lane and she dropped a ward – a fwuffy manticore.

“You good?” I said to her as she cleared the first minion wave. The other team was slow to get to lane. It was Apollo and Xing Tian.

“Yeah, I’m fine, she said in a small huff of breath. She Back Flipped out of the way of Apollo and got him down to about half health before he backed off. She used Unravel to heal a little and Apollo backed.

At this point I was low on mana, but Xing Tian was still in the lane. I was hesitant to ask but I did anyway, “Is it alright if I back?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” she said, continuing to kill the minions.

I got back to base when I looked at the score. That was when I realized why they were late to the lane. “Nick! Xing Tian! He’s level five!”

But it was too late. As I spoke, I could see Nick’s health bar creep down and she was thrown out of the range of the tower. Apollo was back by that point and he killed her quickly.

“FIRST BLOOD!”

“Fuck!” she hissed under her breath. “I fucking hate Apollo!”

“Just relax Nick,” Morgan said to her. “First blood doesn’t mean anything. You’ll get him. Just buy Beads and you’ll be fine.” She heaved a loud sigh.

I made my way back to the lane and handled it with Morgan. He dropped Nick’s attack speed buff and warded further down the lane for us. When she came back with her buff, she was calmer.

As we fought, it was a strange feeling being connected to her by the Aphrodite link. Although it was really Nick, I could feel her rage through it, and when I would stun the other team, it felt as though the jealousy affect made her emotions flare up as well as her power.

She killed Xing Tian a few moments later, and Apollo had rushed into us trying to distract us long enough to let Xing Tian escape. I used the birds on Apollo and let his health drop before Nick killed him with a Spirit Arrow.

“See? I told you,” Morgan said to us. I smiled at her, and Nick turned to me, panting but smiling back.

“I’m gonna fall back,” Nick said. “Don’t push too hard,” and she disappeared.

 In the time that Nick had changed the course of the duo lane with me, Morgan had taken out the enemy Serqet twice. Chase and Ross were having a harder time though, both of them with even K/D scores as well as their respective opponents; Isis was in mid, and Bellona was in solo. They were pushing the guys hard, and both of their lanes had damage on their second towers. Ours did too, but the second enemy tower in our lane was now at half health.

Morgan got cocky then and decided to try for the Gold Fury. He didn’t tell anyone he was though, and wound up giving Serqet a kill before coming right into our lane. I stunned her with a kiss, but it wasn’t enough and she killed me too.

By that point, Serqet was low and Nick turned on her just in time to launch a Spirit Arrow. It missed, and Serqet jumped away.

“Do you have your ult, Nick?” I asked. But she was already crouching and charging. Just as Serqet was getting ready to back, Nick released the arrow and it caught her just before she could leave. Immediately after though, Nick had to Back Flip and run from the lane because Xing Tian and Apollo were closing in on her. She backed and bought her next item.

“Guys, what the hell is going on today?” Chase said as he engaged on a weakened Bellona. Ross had wandered over and Crushed her before she could escape. “Everyone is playing so weird.”

“This is why I don’t talk about my problems,” Ross said as he went back to his lane. I respawned and started toward the duo lane again. “It keeps you thinking about it, and then your emotions affect everything else!”

I could tell he was joking from the tone in his voice, but I heard a muffled grunt from Nick. To an extent, he was right. Everyone was thinking about the night before. We were still recoiling from the first match when we were aware of killing people.

“We need to regroup.” I said. “Everyone needs to drop what’s on their minds and focus on the match. Think about your next item, predict your enemy’s movements, ward when you can. There’s too much to think about in this match to think about last match.”

“Melody has a very good point,” Morgan said. “Sorry guys, I shouldn’t have gone for the Gold Fury.”

“It’s alright,” Ross said. “We just need to focus now. We can still win this.”

As he spoke though, Isis and Serqet were closing in on him. I had just left lane to watch out in mid when they closed in on the first tower, so I used my birds on both of them, linked onto Ross and made them Back Off. Ross spun around and I’m-a-Monstered both of them.

“DOUBLE KILL!”

“That’s my girl!” Nick yelled out.

“No, that’s _my_ girl!” Morgan yelled back. “Nice job, babe.”

I smirked with a slight flush of my cheeks. “Thanks, babe.”

“Gross,” Ross added. Everyone could hear Chase cackling from his lane.

From there, the tide of the match had turned. Whether it was me making sense to everyone or the double kill I helped Ross with, I couldn’t be sure. We had three consecutive lane pushes after the double kill and managed to get three of them on the other team down. We had pushed through to their phoenixes before they surrendered.

As the victory music played, we all fell silent. None of us could believe we had won the match with how terribly we were playing.

Regardless, we had won. We survived. And we just killed five more people.

We left to the lobby screen and the other team just glared at us. I had to turn away from them.

“You killed us!” the Serqet yelled. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“Hey! Shut your fucking mouth!” Morgan yelled back. “It was us or you! We weren’t going to lay down and die here!”

“Why not?” the Xing Tian said. “Your team is fucking shit! You’re going to lose eventually!”

“You’ve killed people too!” Chase yelled. “That’s why you were put up against us, remember?”

“Enough!” Ross screamed.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I swiped at my menu and went back to the base.

I crumpled into a ball the second I made it back. I couldn’t hold it together anymore. I let my emotions finally wash over me. I struggled to breathe as I choked down sobs.

I was finally able to feel what I had done and what we had been through the past three days. The guilt made me nauseous and the fear was crippling. I held my head in my hands, and I cried.

I felt arms around my shoulders and a head press down on mine. Through the tears and the sniffling, I could feel that it was Morgan. I turned to him and buried myself into his chest.

“I can’t… do… this….” I managed to choke out before the sobs. He rubbed my back as I cried. I was just thankful no one had come back yet.

“Shhh….” he hushed me gently. “You can do this. You’re strong enough to survive.”

“But… those people….” I took a shuddering breath. “We’re murderers.”

“We have to be.”


	4. Match 4: Morgan

**[Author’s Note 1/30/16]: I just want to clarify that when I started writing this story, season two of Smite was out, so that is the Conquest and Jungle Practice the story is based on.**

_ Match 4: Morgan _

I didn’t know anything anymore.

Growing up, I was lucky enough to have a pretty normal childhood. I had a good family, lived in a quiet town, and had a good amount of friends that came in and out of my life. I never really had much of a passion for anything other than video games, so I figured I’d try something new.

Going over all of this in my head, I was sitting alone while everyone practiced for the match due to happen in a few hours. But since last night, my mind was racing.

If there was one thing I owed my parents was that I had always been taught right from wrong. I prided myself on generally being a pretty good guy, and I knew how to treat my friends. I’d jokingly say “One more win for the bad guy” when we’d win a match in the originally version of the game.

But now when we won, I really did feel like the bad guy… and I regretted every time I’d ever said that.

To make matters worse, I was getting more and more nervous as we won matches. It felt like everyone was beginning to accept that this was our home now. And while everyone’s focused one winning, I was still attached to the real world.

All of us had friends and family we left behind. But in this world, everyone seemed to not think about what was going on back home… what was happening to our bodies? Were our parents and friends worried? Nick’s body was still away at college for all we knew. She could be dying and not even realize it.

I missed everyone that was still on the outside. While these guys were some of my closest friends, my other friends were still out there… hopefully waiting for me. I really didn’t want everyone to give up, but at the same time, everyone seemed to be forgetting what our real goal was… to _get out_.

After a while, I pushed myself up slowly and stood, gripping the wall. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I looked around for where everyone was before I took my glasses off. I swiped at the menu and selected Chronos. I made my way over to the Fire Giant where Chase was using Chaac.

“Hey,” I said numbly. I started swinging my staff at it, taking the aggro.

Chase looked over at me, furrowing his eyebrows. “Hey…” he said slowly. He continued assaulting the Fire Giant with me but after a few seconds he yelled, “Dude!” When I looked up, I realized how low my health was. Chase jumped in front of me and yelled for me to get back and regain some health. Chase did the rest of the damage until we defeated it.

Panting, Chase turned to me, eyes wide. “Why would you do that?!” he yelled, throwing his hands up in the air.

I kicked my foot at the ground and shrugged. “Dunno.”

I didn’t look back at him but I felt him walk toward me. “Morgan… What’s the matter?”

“Do you really gotta ask that, man?” Finally I met his eyes, but they were curious and questioning. “You realize we’re only doing this to get out alive, right?”

“Of course we are,” he replied quickly.

“Are you sure about that?” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Because it really doesn’t feel like we all miss home.”

Chase visibly flinched and blinked at me. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean that it feels like all of us are just facing that facts that killing is the only way out of here!”

“Well do you have any better ideas?” he said, his hands up in the air.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out! But you all seem to be fine with murdering people!”

“Did you _see_ Melody last night?” he scoffed. “She was a wreck!”

“But we all still did it….”

“It doesn’t matter! Don’t you see what this is doing to all of us?”

At that, I paused. I looked to the ground and my eyes widened, tossing his words back and forth in my head until it finally clicked. I honestly couldn’t see it until that moment… but Chase was right.

I stopped caring about having fun at all, naturally. Chase’s jokes about death and destruction had become minimal. Melody had finally snapped in front of everyone. Ross was openly angry about the whole situation, something only Nick had ever experienced before. And Nick was completely passive. She wasn’t showing how she felt at all.

All of who we once were had been turned on its head and I hadn’t even noticed.

“I just don’t want this… _game_ ,” I spat, “this… _world_ … to change us…. I just want to go home.”

“We all do.”

I swallowed and nodded slowly. My head was spinning. I was being blind to everyone else’s emotions. I felt sick to my stomach and I took a shuddering breath. Chase put a hand on my shoulder and I looked back at him. His face was stern and he gave me a single nod.

_…_

A few hours later, all of us had practiced together as we dreaded who we’d face next. None of us knew how long we’d be able to keep up the winning streak, and – no one dared to say it at this point – but we all knew that we weren’t going to last.

The announcer proclaimed overhead that the next match would be starting in ten minutes. All of us looked to each other, our conversation at the center of the base coming to an abrupt halt. Melody looked down, Nick swallowed, Chase chuckled once, Ross shook his head, and I took a deep breath and sighed.

We sat in silence until the next announcement told us that five minutes were remaining. We all stood up slowly – unwillingly – and mentally prepared for the next challenge.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Ross said. “I can’t say, ‘Ready’ because we’re not. But I can’t say, ‘Good luck’ or ‘Let’s do this’ because that’s cruel.”

“I know,” Chase added. “At this point it’s just a matter of waiting and hoping for the best.”

“I just want this nightmare to be over already,” Melody spoke up.

“Let’s just get through this match and go back to sleep,” Nick said suddenly. I noticed everyone turn to her and she added, “I just want to get it over with at this point.”

We all seemed to silently agree; she was right because there really wasn’t any other way to get through it at this point.

A few seconds later, we were sent up into the air and landed in the Chaos Base. I was Mercury, Nick was Neith, Ross was Scylla, Chase was Chaac, and Melody was Aphrodite. Standing up straight, I looked up to the scoreboard and my chest twisted into a knot.

On the other team, there was an Aphrodite, an Ares, a Serqet, an Ah Muzen Cab, and a Zeus. But the gods weren’t what made me stop breathing.

“It’s them….” Nick trailed off.

Three others from our clan – our friends from the real world – were on the other team. We hadn’t known who else would have logged into the game with us, being that there were only five to a team when we logged in. We didn’t think any of the others had come on, and none of us had thought to use Clan Chat and see who was logged in. When we had checked our Friend Lists for the people that were logged out on the first day, none of the other clan members had shown up as online.

Irvan – playing as Aphrodite – Nick had known for years. They had met on some roleplaying website and had never met in the real world.

Cole – playing as Ah Muzen Cab – we had grown up with. We’d known him for years, and he was really great at other MOBA’s.

And as for Seth… he was Serqet. He was my best friend.

As these thoughts started racing through my head, not being able to tear my eyes away from the scoreboard, messages started popping up in front of us in the Clan Chat.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here,” Irvan had typed to us.

“This is fucking ridiculous!” Seth typed out. A second later, “I want a fucking do-over!”

“They can’t put clans up against each other,” Cole added, “because if one of us wins, then part of the team is gone. This is basically a tournament; it makes no sense!”

Ross turned to all of us with his screen in front of him. He typed out on the transparent keyboard and said to all of us aloud, “Are we supposed to fight?”

Nick added, “What if we surrendered at the same time?”

“How are we supposed to time that right though?” Chase typed out. “We’d be risking all of our lives.”

“No guys,” Cole said. “If we surrender, everyone that surrenders dies.”

I shook my head and back against the wall, not bothering to type out anything. “This can’t be happening….”

“I can’t do this!” Melody yelled as she typed to them. She had really become close with them more recently as she slowly broke out of her shell.

“We don’t have a choice…” Cole said. “One of our teams has to lose.”

For a few seconds, no one said anything as the clock started to ticking upwards.

“We have to lose,” Seth said finally.

“You can’t!” Nick typed back to him as she yelled. “There has to be a way to fix this! We’re in the same clan!”

“I think he’s right,” Irvan added. “If we don’t fight, we’ll all be disqualified. If we surrender, we die. Someone has to give in.”

“Given how many of us are on this team, and how many of you are on that team…” Cole said, “I think we have to-”

Before he could finish the message, Chase wrote, “What about the two others on your team?”

“They’ve basically been suicidal this whole time,” Irvan said. “They’re two brothers, high school age. They knew they wouldn’t last long. We’ve been taking care of them best we can, but….”

“So you want us to kill kids?” Melody said. “That’s horrible….”

“They’ve already accepted it….” Cole said. “We told them what was happening, and they’re okay with it. They want to cheer you all on.”

“STOP!” I typed with shaking hands as I yelled. Everyone looked at me as I looked up at the scoreboard. It was already two minutes into the match and no progress had been made on the map. “There has to be another way!”

“Morgan,” Cole said in Clan Chat, “we have to weigh the lives at stake and the odds of winning here. You guys have teamwork, and we have two defeatists already. We won’t stand a chance later.”

“We’re not pros anyway!” I yelled again. “We suck at this game! We won’t stand a chance against Fnatic or Epsilon!”

“You have to try!” Irvan said. “If you don’t, then none of us are going to make it out of here!”

I took a shuddered breath before straightening up. “Then I want a real fight! Prove to us that we are the better team! Make it fair!”

“Morgan…” Melody said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I think this is hard enough for them.”

“No, he’s right,” Seth said. There was a pause before the next message. “Good luck guys. May the best team win.” After that, the Clan Chat closed. Ross tried to recover the messages, but it was like the option for it had disappeared.

I clenched my hands in tight fights, my arms shaking. “ _Fine_ ,” I hissed. “If they want a fair fight, then let’s do this.” I took off in a sprint toward the Speed Camp before anyone could say anything else.

At the Speed camp, I took the buff pretty quickly before running to the Mana camp with Chase.

“You gotta do the best you can,” he said to me. But I wasn’t listening – not really, anyway – because all I could think about was how much I wanted to tear apart whoever did this to us.

A few seconds later, I ran toward the mid camps with Ross behind me. When I got there quicker than him, my feet skidded to a stop.

I was staring straight at Serqet. I couldn’t help but just stare.

“You wanted a fight,” Seth said with a shrug. He lunged at me, and before I could snap out of my stupor, Ross threw out a Crush and detonated it instantly to make Seth back off. After that, he disappeared into the jungle.

We started attacking the mid furies and as we did, Ross said, “I know this isn’t easy.”

“No kidding,” I snapped.

“But listen, listen,” he insisted. We finished fighting them and he turned to me. I looked down at him and he said very seriously, “We all know this is going to be the hardest game we’ve ever had to fight. But you can’t let it stop you from playing a normal game.”

I gritted my teeth and nodded slowly. As Ross went to mid lane, I ran toward the duo lane for a gank. I saw that Ah Muzen Cab – Cole – was rather low on health, but the Ares that was supposed to be supporting him was running back down the lane instead. I sighed and charged in between the Ares and Ah Muzen Cab, using Special Delivery, taking out Cole rather quickly. The announcer called out “AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!” The Ares tried to chain me with his Ultimate, but I used my beads as he tried to pull me in and finally, I charged in and killed him. “AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

By this point, the game was already six minutes in, and I didn’t know whether or not they would surrender. Not bothering to attack the mid lane, I backed to get more items.

Standing there in the base, I looked up at the scoreboard in dismay. I hadn’t been paying much attention, but somewhere along the lines, we had already picked up ten kills on the other team. I clenched my eyes shut and swallowed hard. I knew that the fight would surely be over soon, but I had to see it through.

I wanted to make every second of the end of their lives mean something.

Running out of the base, I did one of the stupidest things I could have, and not just to mess around. I went to attack the Gold Fury, and sure enough – within a few seconds – Seth was there, ready to gank.

As soon as I saw him, I triggered Maximum Velocity and followed it up with a Made You Look before he could jump on me. It was just enough to disorient him long enough to get a few hits while I let the Gold Fury hit him down to less than half health, as he triggered it with a basic attack as he came at me.

“Surprise mother fucker!” I heard Irvan call to me. Before I could turn around completely, he stunned me with a Kiss and Seth was on top of me as the world went dark.

“YOU HAVE BEEN SLAIN….”

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

I looked over to the scoreboard to see that both Chase and Ross had been killed, trying to save me. “Guys, you didn’t have to do that, I was trying to lure out Seth.”

“Well, we’re not just going to let you die!” Chase called out.

“Maybe you should!” I called back.

“Guys, guys,” Ross said. “Relax. We just gotta keep going okay? If we stress out over a mistake, we’ll lose.”

“Does it even matter?!” I yelled at him. Finally I was able to move again. “What gives us the right to live over them?”

“Because we actually stand a _chance_ ,” Chase clarified. “If we let them move on, the probability of them dying anyway is more likely than if we do. We were practicing for the big leagues before all of this went down, remember?”

“And we stand more of a fighting chance now,” Nick added. “Everyone is almost on an equal playing field again. You can only practice so much, and everyone is learning how to play the game using these controls all over again. You know just as much as I do that we might be able to make it.”

“Morgan,” Melody said then, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to kill them either. But do we really have a choice now?”

At that, I slumped down to the ground. I put my face in my hands and struggled to take a deep breath. Then I felt Melody squeeze my shoulder. I flinched at the touch but I coughed to cover it up.

When I finally was able to breathe again, I looked up at Melody and she gave me a half-hearted smile. She held out a hand to me, and I took it mostly pulling myself up to my feet. She used her teleport to go back to lane, and I started to run out of the base.

Before long, our team had ganked the others more than once, and we had just taken out their tier two middle tower. The two younger kids were down, and Irvan, Seth, and Cole were the only ones left.

Melody went into the phoenix after the minions and stunned Irvan. Nick took advantage of that and fired a Spirit Arrow followed by basic attacks to take him out.

Meanwhile, Cole was trying to get Chase off of him, but Ross was quick to use his Ultimate on him and kill him.

“Morgan, use your Ult!” Ross shouted at me. He was kiting Seth around the phoenix as Nick took it down.

But I hesitated.

I looked back at Seth and shook my head. But before I could even see what was happening, he was on me, and the poison was set.

“Morgan!” Melody yelled somewhere nearby.

But I didn’t look up when I heard the call.

“DEICIDE!”

I didn’t move from where I stood. After that, the match was going to end, and all I could do was tense my shoulders, clench my fists, and wait for it.

After what felt like forever, I heard the victory music play, and my head shot up as I watched their Titan fall in front of me.

“No….” I mumbled, falling to my knees. I fell forward and clenched my eyes shut as I felt a tear fall.

A few seconds later, we were all teleported once again to the lobby.

Silence.

Seth and I stared at each other for what felt like only mere seconds. I was crying, but he was giving me a small smile. As the images of our friends in their god forms began to shatter, I saw Seth – the _real_ Seth – give me a thumbs up. As they faded away, I heard him say, “Kick some ass for me.”

Then they were gone.

I was the first one to leave. I swiped at my menu and fled. I couldn’t bear to stand there in an empty room with all of them gone. When I landed in the Jungle Practice, my shoulders were tense, my fists were clenched, and I was gritting my teeth. Nick was the next one back, and when I turned and saw her land, she was looking at the ground.

“This is your fault!” I yelled. I ran up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her. But she wasn’t fighting me back.

After that, Chase, Melody and Ross teleported back in and I heard them yelling at me to stop. But I had already lost it; I was in a completely blind rage.

“You didn’t even feel sorry when we had to kill them!” I yelled in her face. I felt Chase and Ross’ arms around my shoulders, pulling me off of her. Melody pulled Nick back away from me, and hugged her around the shoulders, but I kept yelling and spitting at her. “You didn’t give a fuck!”

Nick didn’t say anything, her eyes still downcast. There were red marks on her shoulders visible next to her tank top strap. Melody’s eyes were narrowed at me and her mouth agape like she couldn’t believe how I was reacting.

“Don’t you guys see it?! She doesn’t care! She _wants_ to be here! That’s why she isn’t freaking out like the rest of us! We just killed our best friends!”

“Knock it off!” Chase yelled at me.

Ross crushed hard on my arm in his grip. “You need to stop. _Now_.”

“No.” The response was quiet, but we all heard it despite my struggling and grunting for them to let go of me.

“Nick… this isn’t your fault,” Melody said quietly.

“You know it’s mine,” Ross spat at me. “I was the one that brought us into this fucking mess.”

“You’re wrong,” Nick said, a little louder now. Finally, she picked up her head and gently pulled Melody’s hands off of her.

Ross was so dumbfounded he finally loosened his grip enough for me to shrug him and Chase off of me. I stormed back over to Nick and gripped her by the shoulders again. “What did you just say?” I hissed at her.

“You’re right…” she said slowly. She looked me dead in the eyes. “I’d rather be here than the real world. But you’re wrong that I don’t care about our friends. That’s the only reason I’m still fighting this battle.”

I dropped my hands off of her shoulders and gaped at her. I looked back around at Ross and Chase and they were equally as confused.

Melody’s eyes softened. “Nick….” I looked back to her and our eyes met if only for a second before she snapped head away from me and back to her.

“Say what you want. But I’d rather be here… fighting for my life… than in a world where I have no hope at all.”


	5. Match 5: Chase

_ Match 5: Chase _

_As a child you would wait_  
And watch from far away.  
But you always knew that you'd be the one  
To work while they all play.

_….._

None of us knew what to do anymore. This was a game-changer for all of us.

Morgan lost his mind at Nick’s answer. Melody did the best she could to calm him down, but he was in the corner with her, both of them crying.

Ross didn’t know whether to comfort Morgan or try to help Nick. His first instinct was to try helping Nick, but she just pushed him away and insisted she was crazy. When he tried to help Morgan, it wasn’t much better. He couldn’t get control of his breathing until he finally passed out on Melody.

As for me, I couldn’t bear to watch. I instead decided to practice on the Fire Giant, dying a few times. I knew I had the capabilities to beat it, but I just didn’t have the energy to try…. I just needed something to distract me from everything.

When I became too exhausted to keep going, I sat down next to Melody and Ross. Nick was off at one of the camps and refused to come back to sleep. Morgan was out-cold on Melody’s lap.

“Guys… what are we supposed to do?” I asked honestly. “We can’t function as a team like this.”

“We know,” Melody said quietly. “I tried to talk Morgan down and he seemed calmer when he finally fell asleep, but I don’t know how he and Nick will interact once he wakes up.”

“Does it really matter?” Ross said.

That reaction surprised me. “What do you mean? Shouldn’t you be a little more concerned for her?”

“No.” he stated bluntly. “If I’m being honest with myself, she’s been in the gutter – blaming herself for things like this – for a long time. I’m surprised you guys haven’t noticed at all since she left.”

“You’re right,” Melody said, sighing. She stroked Morgan’s hair absentmindedly. “Going away really took a toll on her. She kinda got lost in the shuffle and didn’t have the rest of us there for us anymore… at least not physically.”

“No, it wasn’t the same emotionally either,” I said. “When she left, we all continued to hang out without her, stay up late, and do everything we used to, and I think she felt that. She knew things minimally had changed at home when her whole world was changed when she left. So now she blames herself for removing herself from us.”

“But it was partially our faults too,” Ross added. “We could have made more of an effort to go see her or ask her to come back to visit. I think we really fucked up.”

“The worst part is that she thinks it’s all her fault,” I said, “and Morgan isn’t exactly helping that.”

Melody nodded at this. She looked to Ross, and he slowly helped her ease Morgan off of her and onto the floor. She stood up and left the base to find Nick.

Then it was just Ross and I.

Ross sighed and scratched his scruffy chin. “I don’t know what to do. Everyone seems to look to me as the leader here. But I’m no leader. I can barely follow orders.”

I thought for a moment before answering carefully. “Well… if you’re not the leader… then which one of us is?”

Ross closed his eyes for a brief moment before sighing. “I don’t know. I don’t care. I just don’t want to be.”

“I think it’s Nick.” Ross cocked an eyebrow at me. “Think about it: without her, our group falls apart. She knows how to command the duo lane to well, and she’s taken so much stress on by being the only one to go off on her own.”

“You think she can handle it?” he asked. His question proved what I had thought; Ross didn’t doubt her leadership skills, but he was more worried about her sanity.

“The problem isn’t whether or not she can handle it. The problem is that we need to make her realize that she’s our only hope.”

“Our only hope?” Ross said with a scoff. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Do you have a plan for how we can possibly get out of here alive otherwise?” Ross heaved a deep breath at that. “You know I’m right, and you know that she is the only one of us that knows what she’s doing when it comes to taking charge. Morgan would just yell, you go rouge, I don’t know how to lead, and Melody would struggle to even get a word out. She’s the only one that can.”

Ross thought about that for a minute, leaning back and taking it all in. Finally, he broke the silence, “Do you really think we can make it out of here?”

I thought for a moment before answering honestly. But then I came to a better conclusion. “It’s not about making it out alive. It’s about manipulating the game to our advantage. We have what everyone else doesn’t… a leader… and a true group of friends fighting for power for the sake of each other.”

What I didn’t say though was that while our driving force was to help each other survive, it may also be our greatest weakness.

I sighed and looked down for a moment before continuing my answer. “The thing is that when people fight for the sake of others, they tend to get emotional about it, thus, we’ll probably tilt at least a little when the stakes get high. But if instead we use that fuel to make us fight to the bitter end, we’ll stand a better chance of winning.”

Ross took that in and nodded. “Right….” He stopped, then said, “If only we knew how to do that.”

I scratched my chin and look past Ross. Behind him, Nick was at the Fire Giant but seemed more to be taking a beating rather than practicing. “I can think of where we need to start.”

I stepped past him and make my way over to Nick where she was supposedly practicing as Supernova Sol. She was whipping fireballs at the Fire Giant as she yelled and got hit with some herself. I quickly opened my menu and transformed into Sylvannus as I came over. As the Fire Giant whipped another flaming bomb at her, I slid in front of her and threw my arms out.

I pushed Nick out of the area of the Fire Giant and grabbed her arms.

“Wh- What are you doing? Let go of me!” she yelled, the flames of her hair dancing dangerously.

“No.” I said, firmly. She seemed to heat up underneath my grasp as she glared at me. But when I stared back with the same intensity, her shoulders relaxed and eyes widened. I floated back from me slightly but not in anger anymore.

“Why did you do that?” she said under her breath.

“Because you were trying to kill yourself.”

“You know I can’t,” she shot back, crossing her arms.

“That’s not what I meant,” I snapped back. She stared at me, tilting her head. “You were trying to get yourself killed as Sol.”

“I was practicing!”

“You weren’t.”

She glared back at me before sighing. “So what if I wasn’t? So what if I was letting the Fire Giant attack me? Does it matter?”

“It does. Your drive is gone. Why aren’t you trying? Why did you tell us you don’t care what happens in the end?”

“Because we were doomed from the start.”

“Look,” I said, running a hand through the beard, “it’s obvious that you’re the only one that really believes we can win. So why are you pretending we can’t?”

“We can’t win; this is hopeless.”

“Then why haven’t we surrendered?”

She stopped and thought for a minute. She opened her mouth as if to retort, but instead she closed it, sighed, and shook her head. “Because we all care about each other too much?”

“Because you’re the one everyone is looking to for the positivity.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she said, looking up at me again. “Do you think we can win?”

“I think we can try. And I think _your_ job is to keep up the morale. Can you do that?”

“I can try.”

“No. You will.” She widened her eyes at me. It was understandable since we had only ever had one or two serious conversations in our friendship before. But she knew this was different. We weren’t discussing something and we weren’t talking about something bugging us. We were talking about everyone’s lives at stake. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t asking someone for something. I was demanding it. “You will because you know that caring for everyone here and protecting them is the right thing to do. You owe it to me, and you owe it to them.” I nodded over to where Ross was standing, fiddling with his menu. “You owe it to him.”

Slowly, she turned her head to Ross and then quickly lowered her head so he wouldn’t notice we were watching. Before I could say anything more, her face was in her hands, and tears were evaporating off of her bright blue face.

For a few minutes, neither of us said anything. She let the quiet sobs shake her as she hovered in the air. I looked on as some tears evaporated on her face and others sizzled on the ground but her flaming feet.

“Ten minutes remaining….” the every-present voice rang out. I looked up to listen and then back to Nick.

She took her hands off her face, and balled them into fiery fists of gold. She started shaking again but this time was different. This time, her hair whipped around her head wildly and her eyes were narrow. “We’re going to do this.”

I nodded to her and we both started back toward the base. The others had come back as well to talk strategy.

“I want the mid lane,” Nick said confidently.

Everyone looked to Ross. “Works for me.”

“I’ll take the duo lane with Melody,” I said. “I’ll play Medusa so she can support as Aphrodite.”

Ross nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Don’t be as aggressive…” Melody warned. “Please… I know you’re a good shot, but if you go too far, you’ll break the connection.”

I nodded. “I know. I’ll do my best.”

“I can solo as Chronos,” Morgan suggested.

Ross nodded back to him. “I’ll jungle as Awilix. Everybody good with the plan?”

Everyone made eye contact with each other for confirmation.

“One minute remaining….”

“I’d like to slap her,” Nick muttered.

“It’s not her that’s the problem. It’s the people that locked us in here.” Morgan replied.

“This isn’t Sword Art Online,” Ross added. “It’s a team of people that had to have been working on converting this game to a VRMMO. It would have had to be more than one person in control, and probably more than a simple team of five. Whoever we face at the end isn’t going to be the creator, and we’ll probably never know who it is.”

“And whoever it is at the end,” Melody said, “it’s real people that made it all the way there just like we did.”

And in that moment, we were all transported to the Conquest map.

I glanced over to Nick who had picked out her items so quickly, she was already leaving the base with Stellar Burst activated.

I looked over to Ross who hadn’t seemed to notice, but Melody’s eyes were wide. “What’s gotten into her?” she asked me when she noticed my expression.

“We had a little… _chat_ earlier… and I think I might have gotten through to her.”

“We’re on the Chaos side,” Morgan blurted out. “We’ve been on the Order side until now.”

“So?” I asked.

“So… is this where we lose?”

“No,” Ross said. “Just a change of scenery isn’t enough to throw us off. Let’s go,” he said, heading out on Suku.

Making our way over to the damage camp, we saw the other team hovering around the area of the Gold Fury.

“Guys! We’ve got a problem!” I said, running toward the damage camp.

“No sweat,” Nick said, zooming past me. She launched her stellar burst at the Ullr headed our way. She took out a good chunk of his health, and the Ymir was behind him, not able to block her attacks.

“FIRST BLOOD!”

Then I fired as quickly as I could at the Poseidon that threatened to whirlpool Nick from behind. When she heard my Viper Shots being fired, she whipped around and launched another Stellar Burst at him, sending him back to base.

“DOUBLE KILL!”

All that was left was the Ymir that obviously had no idea how to invade. Melody had come around the back and kissed the Ymir to stun him while we took out Poseidon. Turning around, we attacked the Ymir, bursting him down. Nick set up the kill and I went for it.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“Girl!” Melody exclaimed. I nodded my head in approval at Nick as we took the damage buff for her, and she took off with a smirk.

By the time we got to the lane, we were level three already. We had a few extra seconds to push up the minions far enough to attack the tower before they came back.

After a few more minutes of pushing – keeping the enemy under tower, Morgan and Ross had cornered their Thor as he went to attack Morgan.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“DOUBLE KILL!”

I looked up at the scoreboard that floated overhead whenever we glanced to the sky. It was translucent so that we could still see ultimates coming in, but Ross had gotten the kills.

“Maybe we need to be on the Chaos side more often,” Ross commented. Morgan scoffed back.

Melody and I quickly backed and came back to lane, hardly missing a beat to keep up with the minion waves.

Not too long after that, Nick showed up behind the Ullr and Ymir, unleashed her ultimate followed by Stellar Burst, taking out the Ullr.

“KILLING SPREE!”

I took the opportunity to use my ultimate on the Ymir and took him down with ease.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

I looked up and saw that Ross had been taken down in the mid lane, but before I could react, Nick was already gone.

“YOUR TEAM HAS DESTROYED A LEFT ENEMY TOWER!”

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“Nick! Holy shit!” Morgan exclaimed.

“YOUR TEAM HAS DESTROYED A MIDDLE ENEMY TOWER!”

At that, I chuckled. “It worked.”

“What worked?” Melody asked as we ran toward the second tower in the duo lane.

“My pep talk,” I said, shaking my head.

Melody’s eyes widened slightly but then she shook it and focused on the tower in front of us.

A few minutes later, a few more deaths had gone by on both sides, and we had lost two more towers, one in the duo lane and one in the solo lane. With Nick rotating the way she was, we were able to keep up with them.

Just then, Ross and Nick had gotten four kills together.

“Fire Giant, let’s go!” Ross called out.

Immediately, everyone followed the rest toward the Fire Giant, and when we had gotten there, Nick had already unleashed all of her abilities on it, and she was at half health.

“Out of the way!” I yelled to her as I stepped into the Fire Giant’s area. It threw one last attack at her, nearly taking out her health.

Just then, I heard the sound of a swinging hammer, and before I could shout to Nick, I looked up as he came down on top of her.

But Nick was fast. She knew that Thor getting the Fire Giant would mean a huge setback for our team because the others were coming back up.

As I took the majority of the damage from the Fire Giant, I watched as Nick Stellar Bursted down the Thor, following up with some well-aimed basic attacks. Just as the Thor was running into the Fire Giant to take it down with Hand of the Gods, Nick jumped in the way, stunning him and finishing him off with Disapparate.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

But as the Thor was killed, Nick was hit by the Fire Giant’s damage.

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

But it was just enough to get us the Fire Giant.

By that point, the rest of their team was back up.

“Mid lane, go!” Ross yelled out to the rest of us.

In our ears, we could hear Nick panting with adrenaline. “Come on, take the tower!” she called at us between breaths.

As fast as we could, we bum-rushed the tower and their team barely had time to react from it with their duo and solo lanes in their respective places.

Their lack of coordination gave us enough time to attack their phoenix and as they moved in, Thor and Nick were back up. I dropped a ward as Nick came back, and Ross killed their Bellona.

“Fuck Bellona,” Ross sneered. But just then, their Thor came down on top of him and killed him and Melody.

Their entire team was headed toward Morgan and I, and we quickly got swept up in Poseidon’s ultimate. We hadn’t died yet, but we were really low.

Just then, Nick had teleported in, and immediately unleashed her Stellar Burst on Poseidon. It swept him, Ullr and Thor up quickly.

“TRIPLE KILL!”

As soon as she made the kill, Ymir had ulted and Morgan and I went down. Nick took that opportunity to unleash her ultimate as she ran into the phoenix.

“PENTA KILL!”

“YOUR TEAM HAS DETROYED A MIDDLE ENEMY PHOENIX!”

“NICK!” we all yelled, cheering her on.

The titan fell.

All of us were cheering as the victory music played. But when they showed the titan on the display in the sky, Nick wasn’t cheering.

She was staring at the titan, stone-faced. I swallowed when I realized she must have felt the sickening sensation of what she had just done.

She single-handedly ended the game.

She felt like a murderer.

Before anyone else realized what was happening, we were transported to the lobby with the other team. Immediately they started screaming at Nick about how she doomed them all. They yelled about how Sol was so broken and that she was a cheater and a failure as a human being. They yelled about how she had let the game manipulate her and that she was probably glad that they were all about to die.

And all the while they were screaming, our team was screaming back at them, supporting her, telling them how she had saved all of our lives.

All of them were except for me. I looked on in horror about how everyone was arguing over the value of lives and whether it was right or wrong to go along with the game we played.

Nick just sat on the ground, staring at it. It was strangely uncharacteristic for Sol, cross-legged on the floor. But I knew what Nick was feeling. I knew that it was an incredible guilt weighing on her that was fueled by the adrenaline that allowed her to win the match.

Finally, the arguing stopped. I looked up to watch as the other team began to fade away. Everyone looked away except for Nick. She had looked up too when the arguing finally ceased. She watched as her hard work to win faded away to dust.

We were transported back to the base.

_….._

_And you, you lay_

_Awake at night and scheme_

_Of all the things_

_That you would change_

_But it was just a dream…._


	6. Match 51: Nick

_ Match Fifty-One: Nick _

Justice is something I never thought of as a gray area until now.

Despite everything, the five of us had survived this long. The day we realized that we had to become what we feared most, we stopped talking about anything but the matches.

It was consuming our lives; it was all we ever talked about anymore. We no longer longed for the real world. We no longer worried about how our families and other friends were doing. We no longer fought over right and wrong.

But worst of all… we no longer had any remorse.

Today marked day 51 of hell. But could I even call it hell anymore? We had all grown numb to killing the other teams, and we no longer stayed when they died in a burst of diamond dust.

Except me. I _always_ had to watch.

We never talked about it, but I knew that there had to be something that separated me from the others. There had to be a reason why I was the only to watch what we had done. I knew that it couldn’t be that the others felt guilty. We had already discussed that back around the fifth day.

But there was something about the other teams screaming at me – through tears or otherwise – that almost felt therapeutic. It sickened me to my core that I found comfort in the screams, and I never knew why.

After every match, I would tell myself that we were one step closer to the _real_ enemy. That was at least how I personally justified murdering every team we came across.

I didn’t know what it was for everyone else. I wasn’t sure if I could ever bring myself to ask anyone.

At the state of mind we were all currently in, the last conversation I would have with anyone would have been about this death match.

The only progress we had made in the last 46 matches was that we were all trying new gods and positions.

Melody had learned to play Aphrodite in the solo lane. This was a feat in and of itself because she had never played anything but support before. And the only other two gods she ever played were Hades and Cabrakan. Luckily, Aphrodite transitioned to the solo lane well, and Hades translated to the middle lane which we had started working on with her.

Occasionally, Ross would play support as Athena. He only did so a handful of times in the past, so this helped to make our team a lot more diverse. We decided that the next match would be Ross as support and Chase as ADC.

Chase playing ADC wasn’t all that out of the ordinary but we finally got him to play Loki as a jungler successfully. In the past, he only played Loki in the solo lane and jungled Cabrakan once in a while.

Morgan wasn’t really up for going back into the mid lane, but with his newly attempted Poseidon, he was doing a better job than we expected. He also played Vulcan again and once in a while, he was Agni too.

I was willing to fill at that point. Jungling had never been my strong-suit, but as we got higher in the ranks, there were occasional matches where groups were so nervous that it was very near suicide. While we ultimately murdered them, it was good practice to sharpen my skills as Serqet and Ratatoskr.

That was all any of us seemed to care about anymore: getting strong and going further. We couldn’t do anything else without thinking about how horrible of people we had become.

There were nights when I would lay awake in the base, wondering if we could even be considered human anymore. Wasn’t remorse and empathy what made us human after all?

Thinking about it always made me squirm in discomfort. I would think about the gods we played and the stories they had. There were so many gods and titans and monsters around before the time of humanity. Some of them were merciful of humans while others were rumored to have created us. Other gods wanted to eliminate us for the destruction we caused to each other or our planet.

It started to make me wonder if the stories were true and if those gods were truly warring over our fate now.

Then, when I would come back to reality, I realized that we were so insignificant in our world… the _real_ world. There were so many wars and tragedies happening that I would be humbled when I remembered where we were: trapped in a game with little significance to the world at large.

Just then, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I jumped out of my musings. I turned to see Melody standing there with a look of concern on her face as Aphrodite. She didn’t acknowledge scaring me.

“Oh, hey….” I said quietly. “What’s up?”

“I was just wondering if you wanted to practice our duo lane a bit since we haven’t done it in a while.”

“Uh… yeah, sure.” I said, getting up slowly; I was Chiron and had a hard time getting up that way, still.

We walked over to the minion camp to see how well we could clear together as she kept my health up. We were practicing for a few minutes when I stopped and let a minion hit me. Melody and I backed up and let the waves go then.

“What happened?” she asked. “You know better than that….”

“I know….” I tried to find the right words to say. If I didn’t approach it carefully, I would probably cause her to shut down. “Do you… do you feel different?”

Melody’s eyes widened slightly before she regained composure. “Different how?”

“I mean… lately? Like… I don’t know.” I tried to think of a way to broach the subject lightly. “ _I_ feel different.”

“Are you okay?” she asked, finally. “How do you feel different?”

“I just… I feel like the game changed me. I feel hollow.”

“Why?”

At that, my head snapped up to her and my eyes narrowed. “Why? What do you mean, why?”

At that, Melody shrugged.

“You mean that you don’t feel it too?”

“I mean, sure….” she said. “Things are different now, definitely… but what can we do about it?”

“I feel like a different person. Did you even notice that we all stopped grieving over the other teams?” She said nothing. I shook my head in disgust. “Do you know why I don’t just go back to base after every match?”

“Well, yeah, you want to see them as they leave the game.”

“I watch them _die_ , Melody.”

Her eyes met the ground.

“Melody, we _kill_ people. Is it right that we value our own lives over everyone else’s?”

“We have to _survive_ ….” she said, quietly.

“So don’t we owe it to those that don’t to at least see what we’ve done to them? We don’t even kill them directly, we just watch as they fade from beating them down over the course of 45 minutes!”

“But why torture yourself, then?” she asked. “Doesn’t that just make you feel worse?”

“Don’t these people deserve someone to mourn them?”

At that, she thought about it for a brief moment. “Aren’t their families mourning them in the real world?”

“In the real world, we’re already _dead_.”

Melody’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “You think…?”

“Not literally… I don’t think,” I started. “But if you haven’t noticed, no one else has been doing much thinking about anything but the game.” She nodded. “But I have been. I think that in the real world, our families… our friends… I think everyone is coming to terms with the fact that everyone is already goners. Think about it for a second; they know only one team will make it to the end. Odds are, that doesn’t include their loved one.”

“So… they gave up on us already?”

“That’s what I think, at least.” Melody’s head dropped again. “In here, the only thing we can do is to live on, isn’t it?”

“We are, aren’t we?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think we are. I think that we all feel marked for death, and that’s why everyone else’s deaths no longer effect all of us.”

“I… I can see that,” she said, her voice quivering slightly.

“I think the solution to it all is rather obvious but difficult. We need to apologize. We need to watch what our actions cause. We need to let ourselves grieve… for them and for ourselves.”

Melody bit her lip and sniffed as she looked up at me. “We’re dead, aren’t we?”

I put my hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. I swallowed to force back my own tears. “Melody, we aren’t dead. Not yet. But we need to accept it as a possibility, and we need to take responsibility for our actions. I think that will help all of us, in the end.”

She nodded, still biting her lip. I put my arms around her in a hug, and she hugged me back. She took a shuddering breath against my chest. It was an odd sensation but familiar. It had been so long since any of us had really felt anything… except me.

Until then, I had felt so alone. My anger and desperation to survive had truly gotten the better of me whereas everyone else had chosen to forget as a defense mechanism against grief and _guilt_.

When we pulled apart, both of us wiped tears off of our faces.

“The match is probably starting soon,” I said. “We should tell the rest of the team.”

“Do you think they’ll listen to reason right now?”

I scratched my chin for a brief moment. “I’m not sure, to be honest. But we could try….”

“Maybe it would be best if we wait until the match is over. If we tell them now, they might just get annoyed with us.”

“You’re probably right. Alright, we’ll wait. But let’s go.”

Melody and I made our way over to the base and transformed back into ourselves. It was then that I realized we hadn’t actually changed clothes or needed baths in 51 days. I stopped in my tracks when we got to the base and sniffed the air.

“Nick…?” Ross asked. “You okay…?”

I blinked before looking back to Ross. “I… yeah….” I shook my head and jogged over to the group.

“Anyway….” Ross said slowly. “We decided that Nick takes the solo lane this time.”

“I… as who?” I stammered.

Ross raised an eyebrow at me but continued, “Nu Wa.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you questioning me?”

I lowered my head. “No. Understood.”

Ross didn’t seem to acknowledge my resistance. “Melody, you’ll be Aphrodite support in duo with Chase as Medusa. Morgan is mid lane as Vulcan. I’ll be jungling as Awilix. Any questions?”

No one made a sound, as usual.

“Good.” The group dispersed after that, and I jogged up behind Ross. He turned when he heard me behind him and looked down at me. “Need something?”

At first, my mouth hung open in desperation to find the right words. At the raise of his eyebrow, I snapped it shut, but he was still looking at me quizzically. I bit my bottom lip and turned my head from him.

“Nick.” He said my name bluntly, not in any sort of concern.

That was the tipping point.

I snapped my head back up to him, tears streaming down my face. At that sight, his eyes were finally at least a little more telling, widening in surprise.

“What happened to you…?” I whispered. “Where did the Ross I know go? Where… where did _everyone_ go?”

Ross just stared at me, unable to say anything. I took my arm and wiped my tears on my sleeve. I sniffed and looked back up at him as he just stood there, an empty look on his face. “I miss you….”

“You know I’m apathetic, really,” he said with a simple shrug.

Then I shoved him. I shoved him hard enough and quickly enough that he didn’t expect it, and he stumbled backward into a column behind him. I was clenching my teeth and fists then, my hands shaking, tears stained on my cheeks but no longer crying. “What’s _wrong_ with you?!” I yelled. “You’re not apathetic, and you know it! Show me you care!”

“I… I don’t,” he said with a shrug, dusting himself off.

Behind me, I heard the others walk over but not say anything. “Yes you do! You always cared! You’ve always been there!”

“I’m not anymore,” he said simply.

“Do you _hear_ yourself?! That’s not the Ross I know!”

“Then maybe you don’t know me at all.”

Finally, I lunged at him and tackled him to the ground. He didn’t resist and simply let himself fall. I felt him catch me in his arms, and he just took the pain as I slammed my fists against his chest. “This isn’t you!” I screamed. “Where _are_ you?!”

He let me just continuously hit him for a few minutes until we finally her the announcer. At that point, I was too tired to move, so I slowly pulled myself up off of him and stood up. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and just looked at me with his eyes empty.

I turned abruptly. I couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. It was physically painful to feel that emptiness in his eyes. I pushed through the small crowd of the others and kept walking until we were transported up and off of the map.

I landed down on the base of the Chaos side as Nu Horizons Nu Wa. I looked up to see the enemy team.

It looked like I would be fighting against a Sun Wukong in my lane. Great. Just what I needed.

The other lanes consisted of a Kumbhakarna, Xbalanque, and Nox. The jungler was Hun Batz

I gathered my items a little haphazardly and floated toward the buff. I took a few deep breaths to steady myself, and Ross just watched me as I did. After what felt like forever, I was able to control my breathing, and the match finally began.

We took out the minions in the camps quickly and I made my way straight to the lane. But I made the mistake of charging in immediately where Sun was waiting for me. His power overwhelmed me quickly, and I was down.

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

I looked up at the screen back at the base to see that Ross had taken out Sun and quickly followed was Hun Batz.

“Nick, what are you _doing_?” Morgan called to me.

“I… I’m sorry….”

“Just focus on the match,” Chase said. “Whatever’s bothering you can wait.”

“Guys, chill,” Melody said. “Getting angry at her isn’t going to help her game.”

“Why aren’t you aggravated?” Morgan accused. “Do you _want_ to die?” That made Melody stop talking.

“Nick, you need to focus,” Ross insisted. “Whatever was bothering you earlier needs to be let go of right now.”

“How can I?” I snapped back, finally. I respawned and came back to my lane. I got back into the groove of killing minions rather quickly.

“Everyone else is fine but you,” Chase pointed out.

“But you’re not! Listen to what you guys are saying! All of you used to be there for each other when we had problems. Now you’re telling me to shut down!”

“Because you have to,” Morgan said. “If you don’t we can’t win.”

“What makes winning everything?”

“It’s for our lives!” Chase said. “What do you mean?”

“What makes our lives worth more than everyone else’s? Don’t you care about the others being killed?”

“No.” Morgan said firmly. “We can’t. If we do….”

“If we do, what?” I said. “You realize what kind of monsters you’ve become? You feel guilty? _Good._ That’s your humanity speaking to you.”

“But we’re not technically human here,” Chase said.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

In the duo lane, Melody and Chase both went down while he was arguing with me and Melody felt defeated.

Finally, I saw an opportunity and blasted away my clay soldiers to stun Sun, and as he ran away, I used my ultimate to finish him off.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

I realized that the Kumbhakarna that had gotten away from Chase had been low enough that I took him down along with Sun, so I had gotten two kills out of it.

As I attacked the tower in my lane, the tower in the duo lane started to fall. “Yes we are! Just because this isn’t the real world doesn’t mean we aren’t causing damage to real people!”

“Well thinking about that right isn’t about to fucking help us!” Morgan snapped back.

“YOU HAVE DETROYED A LEFT ENEMY TOWER!”

“Why?! Because you’re scared to admit to yourself that you’re shamelessly murdering people?!”

“That’s exactly fucking why!” Ross finally yelled. Everyone fell silent. “Of _course_ we all care, Nick. _Of course_! But how can you stand there and watch us all suffer and feel it too?!”

“Because these people deserve some fucking respect! We’re killing them for our own selfish reasons, and we should be held accountable for it!”

“So what then? You want to go to jail when this is all over?”

“I want to apologize! I want to say I’m sorry! What we’re doing – what we’ve been _forced_ to do,” I said shouting it upward as if the announcer could hear me, “is _wrong_! And we all need to admit it now or we’ll never forgive ourselves!”

Everyone fell silent again as I seethed with anger. The rest of the match was something out of nightmare for us. No one was communicating. We lost all of our towers, my lane being the first. Finally, we were pushed to our titan, but in the final few minutes, the other team died when we bum-rushed the Fire Giant as they got their health depleted.

The victory music finally played, and I sat in the base alone, shaking with rage. Despite everything, we had to kill once again.

Finally, we were transported to the lobby screen. As usual, the other team was cursing us and crying at the same time. The others had already disappeared when I sat down as I always did and watched the others.

But then I felt a presence next to me.

Melody.

When she sat down, she didn’t say anything and didn’t look at me. We sat there in silence for a few moments as we watched them panic.

When they finally started to fade away, they quieted down and cried, as the players in the past tended to do. Melody leaned her head on my shoulder as the two of us cried with them, and I put my arm around her shoulders.

Finally, they all faded into dust, and the two of us were transported back to the base.

When we got back, we were still curled up like that together, crying. The others walked away from us when they saw us come back.

And that was okay.

I realized then that everyone would eventually come around, but it took time. They were all going to be in denial for a while.

Even Melody – who had sat with me and watched the other team fade – was not fully there. She knew in her mind that I was right – as did the others – but Melody wasn’t ready to really confront herself about her actions just yet.

But I was thankful. Something inside me let me know that I was still me. I still felt the pain and the thrill of a fight. I still felt the desperation and sorrow of loss. I knew that I was still alive.

And what stayed with me… what made me who I was… was my compassion for my friends and the other teams.

And that one trait… that one part of me that was positive and beautiful and full of love… was what held me together. It’s what kept me going all this time and what made me strong enough through all of this.

And I would never let it go… because my friends needed me now more than ever.


	7. Match 52: Ross

**[Author’s Note 5/24/16]: Sorry for the short hiatus everyone! I moved out recently and was in the process of readjusting, so writing took a backseat for a while! Anyway, enjoy the next chapter!**

_ Match Fifty-Two: Ross _

I couldn’t stand to watch Nick cry.

Under any other circumstances, I would have rushed over and taken her into my lap and let her curl up in my arms. I’d wipe her tears away and rock her back and forth until her breathing calmed down. I’d show her picture of baby animals or a funny video… anything to get her mind off of whatever was upsetting her.

But this time was different.

I turned away from her and Melody and sat at the edge of the minion camp, watching them kill each other over and over again. When I was frustrated with a match, I found it oddly soothing to watch other people kill each other than do it myself.

I knew that I couldn’t help her anymore because I couldn’t help myself. Without having a strong defense, how can you have a strong offense to fight back the demons?

All of it made me feel weak… useless. It wasn’t a feeling all that unfamiliar to me, but I was feeling it stronger than I ever had before.

Nick was right. Before we had come here, I was different. But I knew now that my team needed a leader and a strong one at that. But feeling this weak made me start to struggle, and I began to doubt myself after just a few matches.

When the doubt that I could help the team finally settled in, that was when I stopped trying to help the team emotionally. I felt that if I could be the rock that I thought everyone really needed – emotionless and unfeeling – everyone else would be able to get through all of this too.

Blinking, I stared at the minions as the beat each other into oblivion until I finally stood up and got between them, taking the hits myself. I couldn’t bear to watch the fighting anymore, and I knew something had to change.

Finally, I just killed all the minions myself and left before more could spawn.

When I got back to the base, Morgan and Nick were arguing. I hadn’t seen them this passionate since the game first started, and I wondered what had caused it this time.

I walked over and stood next to Chase and Melody both looking on with confused looks as if not knowing what to do. I put a hand on Chase’s shoulder and whispered, “What are they arguing over?”

“Well, Nick thinks that Morgan was being too hard on Melody because he told her to quit crying, and when Morgan told Nick to shove it up her ass, Nick told him he didn’t give a shit about how Melody felt at all.”

“And it just got worse from there,” Melody said, sighing. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, who’s right?” I asked her.

Melody looked up at me and blinked. “What?”

“Who’s right?” I repeated. “Were you crying over nothing, or was Nick right to defend you? And do you feel that Morgan cares about you, or do you think Nick is justified in what she said? After all, they wouldn’t be having this argument if the answer was clear, would they?”

Melody’s jaw dropped slightly and Chase’s eyebrows raised before all three of us looked back to the two people in question getting dangerously close to one another.

I stepped forward and put my arms up. “Alright, enough already,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

“Ross,” Morgan said sternly, “back off. This is between me and her.”

“I think it’s actually between you and Melody,” I pointed out.

“Shut the fuck up, Ross!”

“He’s right!” Nick snapped back at him. “Don’t yell at him! You need to talk calmly to Melody instead of being a total dick!”

“I just got aggravated in the moment! You should stay out of my relationship!”

“You shouldn’t be a dick to my best friend!”

“The match will begin in five minutes….” the announcer called out overhead. Everyone fell silent for a moment taking that in.

“I’m not being a dick,” Morgan shot back. “If there is something wrong with the way I’m talking to Melody, she would tell me herself, right?”

Everyone’s eyes suddenly turned to Melody, standing closely still to Chase. All eyes on her, her own eyes widened and she took a tentative step back.

“Maybe we should just give her some breathing room,” Chase started. “I think she’s a little overwhelmed with all of the fighting over her.”

“We’re not fighting! Nick’s just wrong!”

“Well is she?” Chase asked.

Morgan stopped and scrunched his eyebrows at Chase. “What do you mean?”

“Have you ever stopped and asked her if she’s okay when she’s upset?” Nick asked quickly. Morgan shot her a look but didn’t retort. “Have you stopped and asked yourself if maybe you were wrong?”

“You’re clearly living in some kind of _fantasy_ world, Nick,” he said, wiggling his fingers in the air. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re in a life or death situation now. We don’t have time between matches to ask about our _feelings_.”

“Aren’t we doing that right now?” Chase asked quietly.

“Butt out, Chase!” Morgan yelled at him.

Nick folded her arms and glared at Morgan. “I’m not even talking about here. I’m talking about _all_ the time. Like, even _before_ this happened?” she asked.

Morgan opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again, turning again to look at Melody. She took that initiative to hide behind Chase and shake her head. Chase put an arm in front of her and then said, “I don’t think this is the time to ask her, Morgan.”

“And maybe you should apologize,” I said, finally. “Don’t talk to Nick like that either.”

Morgan shot me a look that said it all, but before we could start another argument, we were all transported to the Order base.

Luckily this time, Morgan would be as far away from Melody and Nick as possible. He was in the solo lane as Chronos, and Melody was Aphrodite with Nick as Chiron in duo. I was taking the mid lane as Scylla for the first time in ages, and Chase took the jungle as Cabrakan.

Team fights would be interesting though.

When the match first started, it seemed to be going smooth enough. None of us were fighting with each other and we stayed relatively quiet aside from team coordination.

It was ironic considering how we all started playing.

When we began our team, none of us took it seriously. We played with our other friends….

We would always talk to each other about unrelated things during the matches, often distracting each other and getting each other killed.

It was times like this when I realized how much things have changed between all of us.

This has been the most distant I’ve been with Nick since we became friends all those years ago. Our friendship and relationship as a couple had only grown with time and love. I was there for her, and – despite her wishing she could be more helpful to me, feeling that I was always the one she leaned on for emotional support – she was there for me more than she ever knew. And the distance between us now was tearing me apart.

Nick and Melody hadn’t been friends for very long before the game began, but it was one of the fastest growing friendships I had ever seen, starkly contrasting our relationship. It was good for Nick though because before her, she hadn’t had many female friends that hadn’t treated her like crap. And it was mostly why she was more pulled toward having male friends. She was able to do some of the more girly things she had suppressed over the years with Melody, and she was someone Nick could for advice where I didn’t know how to help. It was good that they had shared a moment after the last match, and although I didn’t understand it at the time, I realized that mourning was something I probably needed to learn how to do.

My friendships with Morgan and Chase had been great until we came here. All of us taking life as it came, never having a day planned out ahead and just going with whatever came at us. Spending all hours of the night talking about the universe and scientific theories with Chase, and playing every kind of outlandish game possible with Morgan made life a little more meaningful each time.

It was heartbreakin to see how far apart Morgan and Melody had become over the past few weeks while we were here, and as I watched them, I feared there was a parallel between them and Nick and I. The difference was that while Nick and I had always had a solid line of communication outside of the game world, and Nick finally broke the wall of silence again, Morgan and Melody never had that to begin with, and it was really starting to show. The heartbreaking part was that they actually really did care for each other, but – as I already knew – that was not the only thing a relationship needs to stay alive.

My friendship with Melody before the game was small; she was really awkward at first, but then we slowly grew closer with time, and I wasn’t sure in what light she viewed me now, what with how cold I’d been as of late.

As for Nick’s friendships with Morgan and Chase… well that seemed to be more than up in the air now. Chase and she didn’t seem to have all that much conflict since the whole thing began, and when asked, they still performed to the best of their ability in the duo lane. As for Nick and Morgan… their conflict was something else entirely.

Just then I was knocked to the side by the opposing Poseidon’s attack and thrown out of the range of the tower. In my own thoughts, I had been completely out of sync with the fight.

In that instant, Chase came charging in behind the Poseidon and trapped him behind his wall. I took the opportunity to use my ultimate and secure the kill.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen the opposing Bakasura coming out from the jungle and took me down quickly.

“Ross, what just happened?” Chase asked as I watched him run back through the jungle.

“I was just distracted,” I said quickly. “I’m fine, don’t worry about it.” I glanced over at the duo lane to see if Nick left any kind of response to that. But luckily it looked like she was trying to put her feelings aside to win, as she always did.

If there was one thing I admired her for – and trust me, I could name a lot – it was how much she cared for the rest of us.

The match continued like that for a while, going relatively the same as the others. We usually had an uphill battle. But with the progress we’d made coming together as a team and only focusing on the fight, we’d managed to come a long way.

“Nick, Melody and Ross move into the far side of the jungle,” Chase called out. “We can trap their Cupid and Xing Tian going for the buff!”

“On our way,” Nick called back.

“Yeah,” I called back quickly.

We had made it over there in time, but they were waiting for us. Their Bakasura was there again and jumped on top of me.

Luckily, Nick was there in time to burst him down.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

Melody did her job protecting the two of us but ultimately went down.

“AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

Despite that, we were able to take out the others that remained and won the team fight pretty quickly.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

That finally brought my K/D ratio back up and gave me just enough confidence to boost my spirits a bit. The three of us returned to the base briefly before attacking the Gold Fury together and taking it down. Our lead was now pretty significant from that, and still we managed to avoid any further arguments.

None of us really seemed to be holding our breath until the end of the match. The part that worried me the most was the Fire Giant and whether or not we would all agree to go after it and when.

At the point that we all needed it, I made the call to make sure there was no arguing. We had all just finished a team fight in the middle lane and won, making two of their members run, so I figured it would be the best option.

“We shouldn’t go for it,” Nick said. “Their Bakasura and Poseidon are still up. They could easily wind up teleporting nearby with a ward, and then get the last hit on the Fire Giant.”

“ _Or_ ,” Morgan snapped, “you could just listen to Ross and actually get something done!”

“Guys, this is not the time for this!” I yelled as we all made our way over to the Fire Giant. Despite Nick’s opposing view, she knew that when a call is made, you had to follow through or it would be too late.

Too everyone’s horror, Bakasura did show up, and Poseidon ulted all of us. Only Nick and I died immediately, but the rest of our team secured the Fire Giant.

Nick and I watched from the base as the rest of our team turned on the Bakasura and Poseidon, killing them quickly enough, and still having time to burst down a phoenix, if just barely.

“YOUR TEAM HAS DESTROYED A MIDDLE ENEMY PHOENIX!”

We regrouped after that and waited to attack on two fronts when they made a mistake. When the time came, we split into two group, one attacking on the left and one on the right. By that point, their team’s demeanor was pretty badly damaged. We had one final team fight before we ended the game.

I looked to Nick as the victory music played, and her eyes met mine.

When we were transported to the lobby screen, Morgan and Chase immediately left. With the other team screaming at us and crying that they were about to die, I watched Nick and Melody hug as they cried too.

Making my decision, I walked over to where the others were sitting and kneeled down behind them. Looking up, Nick gave me a small, sad smile before hugging Melody again.

I leaned over the two of them and hugged them both, but though no tears came, I watched as the other team faded away.

A few moments later, we were teleported back to the base in that position. When I looked around, I saw Morgan and Chase leaning up against a column across from us.

The three of us stood up slowly, and I held out my hand to Nick, helping her to her feet. She smiled up at me and mouthed “thank you.”

Pursing my lips a bit, I then let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I put my hands on her waist and pulled her closer to me, locking my hands behind her.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “You’ve been right. I just wanted the team to have the leader it needed. But I was wrong; we don’t need a stone cold leader. We need a loyal one.”

With that, Nick stood on her tip-toes, cupping my face in her hands and kissed me hard on the lips. The warmth I felt from her kiss then was so close to real, I could feel myself relax under her touch. I pulled her into my embrace and kissed her back.

When we pulled apart, she leaned her head against mine for a moment and kissed my nose. Then she whispered, “I missed you.”

I smiled and whispered back, “I missed you too.”

“I see we’re taking sides now,” Morgan’s voice called over to us.

“Morgan, there’s no sides,” I said, putting out my hands. “Nick made a mistake out there, but followed through with the call anyway. It wasn’t a perfect fight, but it happened, and we won.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said, stepping toward us. “I meant with the argument earlier. You’re taking her side.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” I said, “I was just sitting with her and Melody because it’s the right thing to do.”

“ _Oh!_ So now you’re telling me that I don’t do the right thing through all of this right?” he said, his voice starting to rise. “Look, I do what I have to in order to keep my head on straight. If that means I help all of us get out alive that way, then so be it!”

“Morgan, that’s not what he’s saying,” Nick added.

“Shut the fuck up, Nick!” he snapped.

“Hey!” I shouted back. “Don’t talk to her like that,” I said, keeping my voice even but stern.

“Or what?” he said.

“Or nothing,” I replied. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Then stop defending her!”

“I won’t! She’s right.”

“Fine. My fight isn’t with you anyway.” He straightened himself up for a moment, but then – to my horror – he took a swing at Nick instead.

Already being on alert, Nick managed to move in time, but the punch grazed her jaw a bit as she stepped sideways. Melody yelped in surprise, and Chase let out a loud, “Whoa!”

With Morgan aiming another swing at Nick’s face with his other fist, Nick reached out and grabbed his wrist in time, but took another punch to the stomach, finally knocking her over.

She gripped her side with one hand, but still, no one made a move to help.

Shaking my head, I finally came out of my daze and grabbed Morgan by the shoulder. As he turned to take a look at me, I punched him as hard as I could in the nose, knocking his glasses off his face.

He stumbled back and tripped over one of Nick’s legs, falling to the floor next to her. I reached down and help out a hand to Nick again, and she took it quickly, jumping to her feet, but wincing as she gripped her side.

With the four of us looking down at him, Morgan was taking shallow breaths to steady himself and finally pushed himself onto his hands and knees. When he stood, he wiped his face where blood normally would have been with the back of his hand, and stumbled over to a column away from us, slumping down against the wall.

I made eye contact with each of the rest of the members of the team. Nick was smiling. Melody bit her lip. Chase had his arms folded.

I knew then that everyone still had a while to go until they felt whole again. I knew that as a team, we needed to work together to help each other – Morgan included – now more than ever. But I wouldn’t give up on them. Loyalty was the one thing that I had left to give them. And I wouldn’t let this world take that away from me.


	8. Match 53: Melody

_ Match 53: Melody _

There was nothing bright ahead of us.

I never thought I would lose sight of what was most important to me. But this world… this horrible, terrifying world… had turned us all into monsters. For weeks, we all murdered without so much as a little remorse.

It had taken the conversation with Nick to bring me back to the reality that we were in. She made me finally feel something for the first time in weeks, and while the feelings were some of the worst I had ever felt about myself in my entire life, I relished in it. I knew it was something I needed to feel, something I needed to face as a human. And I was so thankful for Nick bringing me back to feeling again.

When I watched Ross finally break his silence, my heart swelled. Something inside me let the gates start to break, but not completely… not _yet_.

And at the time, I didn’t know if that meant we had started something new or had met our end. If we continued down this road, we could only either fall apart entirely or come out only stronger. But to me, the former appeared to be much more likely than the later.

I hadn’t know how fast I was losing Morgan. Or maybe he was losing me. But somewhere deep down, I knew that I wasn’t wrong – in our relationship or in my stance on how we needed to start handling this world. It truly hurt as I watched him fall apart in front of me. But the situation was less of a falling down and more of a drowning. It was slow and painful… and there was no way I could help him anymore.

But I wasn’t about to give up. There were so many things that needed to change, so many ways for us to remedy what we had become. So when I had finally stopped crying that night, I took a breath and crawled over to Morgan who sat on the floor in a heap.

He gave me a sideways glance when I crept over to him with his arms folded. He didn’t really look up at me and instead stared down at his feet.

“Morgan,” I breathed. My voice was shaking slightly, but I knew there was no use trying to steady it. I had to get out what I needed to say whether or not he wanted to hear it at this point.

“Go hang out with Nick or Ross,” he said, his voice soft yet stern. “I don’t want another lecture.” Then he mumbled something about “Or another punch.”

“I don’t want to lecture you,” I said, putting my hands out, “I want to talk about what happened.”

“Does it really matter now?” he asked, finally looking at me. I furrowed my eyebrows at him but he continued, “You’ve already made a decision about me.”

“I-” I cut myself off trying to choose my words carefully. “I don’t… I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I’m trying help the situation,” I tried explaining.

“You’re gonna go along with whatever Nick tells you at this point,” he started. “She obviously thinks something is wrong between us, and she thinks she has to defend you against me!” His voice started to rise at the mention of Nick.

I began to understand where this conversation was going, and I didn’t like it at all. “Morgan, I think Nick had a point. You know that I normally don’t say anything unless there’s a real issue, and when you finally wanted to talk, you immediately shut me down.”

Morgan gaped at me for a moment before clenching his teeth. “No she doesn’t! How could you say that I don’t care about how you feel? Of course I care.”

I winced slightly at his tone before taking a breath and shaking my head. “You haven’t been acting like it. Any time I get upset over a match or try to talk to you, you’ve been so harsh with me. You’ve told me how I had to learn to deal with being in this world.”

“Well it’s true!” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “This is different from the real world. You actually have to try here. You can’t just sit back and be afraid that it’s not going to get better.”

“Then what’s your excuse for before the game?” I spat out at last.

Morgan just stared at me for a moment. “What?”

I bit my bottom lip and then took a deep breath. “It’s obvious that the game isn’t the only issue we have,” I started. “I don’t think it was ever really clear to either of us what we wanted.”

“What do you mean? I thought things have been good…” he said letting the thought hang in the air.

“They have been,” she said, “or at least, they were for a while. But I think as we got more serious, neither of us were really taking it seriously anymore. We were together for so long but never stopped to think where our relationship was heading the way it was.”

Morgan scratched his chin in thought. He didn’t look at me and seemed to actually think about what I had said. I couldn’t remember a time when he had actually done that during an argument before. “You know… maybe you’re right.”

I sighed, relieved that he was finally listening to what I had to say. “I care about you, and I know that you care about me… right?” he nodded and opened his mouth as if to add something but I continued. “Then I think that we just don’t want the same things in a more serious relationship. And that’s okay.”

“I… wait….” he stammered a bit before gaining composure. “Are you breaking up with me?”

I nodded slowly.

“Well…. I guess that’s it then.”

“I’m sorry,” I blurted suddenly.

He looked up at me again and furrowed his eyebrows. “Sorry for what?”

“Maybe… things would have turned out better if we had talked more.”

“Melody… don’t sweat it.” he said rather calmly. I was surprised by his reaction but tried not to show it. “You shouldn’t be the one apologizing. We were both in the wrong.” He paused as if he had a thought but wasn’t sure how to word it. “I think I have some stuff to work on.”

I didn’t question what that stuff was because it didn’t appear like he had a desire to tell me. But all along, I had felt like that was a part of it, albeit a small one. He never knew what he could and couldn’t tell me, and that had led to many of our issues.

“Well, I’m still here,” I said. I bit my bottom lip again before adding, “I still want to be friends, and I still want to be here for you if you need it.”

Morgan nodded and a small smile appeared on his face. “Thanks… I want to be. I just need some time.”

I gave him a small smile in return. I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I turned to walk away.

“Hey,” he said. I turned back to him and he was holding up his hand. I smirked at him and we high-fived. “Good on us.”

“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.

Morgan looked around the camp. It was getting really late by this point and we knew we would have to be up in just a few hours. “I’m gonna head to sleep now,” he said, stretching. “But I’m gonna stay over here tonight. I think I need to cool off a bit, ya know?”

I nodded and gave him a small smile before heading to the middle of the base.

When I came over to the other side, Nick looked up at me from where she was curled up next to Ross. I took brief notice that Chase was sitting in the corner seemingly in thought, but not too far from them.

“Hey,” she said quietly. Ross’ head was laying on her lap as he slept. “I couldn’t sleep. How you feelin’?”

“A lot better,” I said, settling down beside her. “Morgan and I talked.”

Nick’s eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Yeah…” I said, rubbing my arm with one hand. “When I stopped crying, I went over to him.”

“Wow… How… How did that go?”

I started twirling some of my hair around my finger. “Well, I didn’t go into everything that he said, but we definitely are starting to work things out.”

Nick allowed a small smile to spread across her face before looking down at Ross and running her fingers through his hair. “I’m glad he listened to you.”

“We broke up.”

Nick’s hand froze where it was before she faced me again. “ _What_?”

“We had it coming,” I said calmly. “He wasn’t the only one at fault, you know.”

Nick surprisingly nodded. “I’m a little more observant than you think,” she said.

“I mean I do tell you pretty much everything,” I said feeling a little guilty.

Nick held up her free hand. “I’m your best friend, and Morgan is my friend too. It wasn’t just you. There was a lot going on from both sides, even from things neither of you told me.”

I raised my eyebrows at her but didn’t say anything else. The statement spoke for itself.

“Nick?” I said after a while of silence.

“Mmm?” She continued stroking Ross’ hair absentmindedly.

“Thank you… for being a good friend. You stood up for me, and you even made me realize why I’d been feeling so awful about all of this.”

Nick just shook her head. “That’s what I’m here for, right?”

I just nodded and decided not to argue. After crying for the majority of the night, my eyes were growing heavier, and before I knew it, I was asleep.

The following morning, I woke up after most everyone else but Morgan. The others were sitting in a small circle not too far from me, talking rather idly.

“Oh, Melody,” Chase said, seeing me come over. He scooted over close to Ross and patted the spot next to him. “We were just talking about what happened yesterday,” he said as he chanced a look over at Morgan.

I raised my eyebrows for a brief moment before sitting down next to him. “Oh…. I mean, he seemed okay after I spoke to him.”

“But that was just between the two of you,” Ross said. I think we need to figure out how to be a little more cohesive again.”

“And not just that,” Nick raised her finger, “but we need to become friends again and realize that we need to help each other get through this together and not just deal with it all alone.”

I nodded. “That makes sense,” I said. I looked to Chase to see his response to this and he seemed to close his eyes and nod in agreement. I was slightly surprised because of how long he had stayed quiet during the argument yesterday.

“Chase,” Ross started. I continued watching Chase. He looked over to Ross. “What’s your take on all of this?”

“I think that we all lost track of who we are at one point or another here.” To that, no one said anything so Chase continued. “Think about it for a minute. Nick stopped caring, Ross stopped being the one everyone looked to for help, Melody lost her positivity, and Morgan snapped.”

All of us looked to each other for a minute until Nick posed the question hanging in the air. “What about you?”

Chase just shrugged. “I didn’t have much I cared about in the real world anyway.”

Nick and I looked at each other for a moment. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick blurted. “You don’t care about making it out at all?”

Chase shrugged again and I could swear I saw fire in Nick’s eyes. “The only reason I haven’t given up yet is for you guys.”

“But Chase,” Ross said, “you can’t just do this for us. You have to want to live.”

“Says who?” Chase said with a small chuckle. “If we get out of here, what does it matter?”

“The match will begin in ten minutes!” the announcer called overhead.

All of us exchanged glances briefly.

Then I stood up. “I’ll wake up Morgan.” With that, I took a breath and walked over to where he was still laying on the floor, asleep. “Morgan…?” I called gently. I reached out, my hand hovering over his shoulder for a moment before I shook him. “You have to get up.”

“Wha…?” he said, rubbing his eyes. He straightened up and pulled out his glasses. “What time is it?”

“The match is starting in about ten minutes,” I said.

Morgan’s eyes snapped open. “I slept through the morning?!” He pushed himself upright and stood. “What’s the plan?” he said, jogging over to the others.

Ross and Nick exchanged a brief glance.

“Just tell me! Hurry up!” Morgan shouted.

“Alright, relax,” Ross said, putting up his hands. “You’re going to jungle as Mercury.”

Morgan nodded and crossed his arms.

“Anyway…” Ross said, “Nick is gonna go Sol mid, Chase will be our a.d.c. as Medusa, I’ll support as Athena, and Melody will solo Aphrodite. How is that?” No one seemed objected to the idea, so Ross nodded. “Alright, sounds like we agree then.”

“The match will begin momentarily.”

We all looked to each other, bracing ourselves for the inevitable.

A moment later, we were all transported to the Order base of the field. We looked up at the board to see that the enemy team was made up of an Ao Kuang, Isis, Khepri, Ullr, and Tyr.

I bit my bottom lip. That meant I was up against Tyr.

“Melody, something wrong?” Chase asked.

I turned to him, still biting my lip. “I… I haven’t fought a Tyr yet….”

Chase gaped at me for a moment before saying “You’re kidding….”

I shook my head. “There have been a few support Tyr, but they all didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Alright,” he said carefully as we chose our items on the menu. “It will be difficult, there’s no doubt about that. But you can do this. When he switches stances, you have to be careful. He has a Guard stance and an Assault stance. It will be intimidating, but you _have_ to attack when he’s in Assault stance. If you don’t, he’ll be too strong against your attacks in his Guard stance.”

I grimaced a bit, but nodded. “I’ll try.”

“You can do it,” Chase said. “I believe in you.”

Blinking a few times, it took me a moment to register that Chase was talking to me. I allowed him a small smile. “No promises, but thank you.”

He nodded and slithered away.

The match was moving pretty steadily for a few minutes, with both Tyr and I having gone back to the base twice each with no kills from either of us yet.

But their Ao Kuang decided to show up in our lane. “Ross!”

“I’m on it,” he said, lunging into the air. In a few moments, he landed beside me, and battled the Ao Kuang. I linked up with him and healed as he fought the best I could, using the seagulls on Tyr in the meantime. The magic power I had built made my healing power increased, and Ao Kuang was quickly being overwhelmed.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

After the Ao Kuang went down, I used my sprint to chase down the Tyr and rooted him with my Kiss. Just then, Morgan showed up and was able to take him down.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

I looked over to Morgan, and he gave Ross and I a thumbs-up before running off. Ross and I returned to the base to gain health back and pick up an item.

A few minutes later, I was back up against Tyr neck and neck with our minions. And just as Chase had said, I waited for him to switch into Assault stance.

When it finally happened, I first used my Kiss to root him in place before sending out the seagulls to drain him down. Finally, I used my Sprint again to get close enough, and I used my Back Off ability to finish him off.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“Look at Melody go!” Nick exclaimed, and I looked over briefly to see fire shooting into the air.

“AN ENEMY HAS BEEN SLAIN!”

“I’d say she’s… _on fire_ ,” Morgan said with a sneer.

It was silent for a moment before all of us burst out laughing.

“Morgan…” Nick said slowly, “that was fantastic.”

“I’m gonna tell the other team how much I hate my own team.”

I giggled to myself for a moment before attacking Tyr’s second tower as best as I could. His defeat had given me the chance to become even with him.

Later in the match, I called for everyone to go after the Fire Giant when we had finished a particularly tense team fight.

To my disbelief, everyone immediately followed my lead, and I latched onto Chase as he began to burst down the Fire Giant. Everyone else followed suit, and before the remaining members of their team could make it over to us, we took down the Fire Giant.

“Middle phoenix!” Nick called, and all of us immediately rushed down the middle lane.

Together, we took down the middle phoenix with ease, and returned to the base without a loss.

We fought another team fight after that, and to everyone’s astonishment, we had come out it even with the other team.

We knew that it wouldn’t be enough to win the match, so we retreated again, picking up any final items and using potions.

The final team fight was in their base as Chase burst down the Titan. At last, the victory music played, and all of us cheered.

When we were transported to the lobby screen, all of us fell silent rather quickly and exchanged looks.

Chase and Morgan quickly left, but the three of us, Nick, Ross and I, sat down together and watched the other team as Nick and I had come to do. Ross was here last time, and seemed to close his eyes, just listening to the sounds of the cries and screams until they finally died down.

As the other team began to fade away, a knot formed in my stomach, and I began to cry. Nick and Ross both pulled me close to them as we transported back to the base.

“You alright?” Nick said, finally pulling back from me. Ross pulled away too and gave me a look of concern.

“Yeah…” I said slowly, “honestly… the guilt has been really bothering me…. But the thing is… that’s not why I was crying.”

Nick and Ross looked to each other briefly before looking back to me. “Then what’s wrong?” Ross said first.

“I think… I’m relieved,” I said, finally.

“Relieved?” Nick repeated. “I’m honestly surprised….”

“I am too,” I replied. “But then thing is… I think this is a good thing for me. I’ve been so miserable with realizing that we’re killing all this time and just feeling guilty. But I think now… I’ve turned that guilt into something else.” I looked away for a minute to Chase who seemed to be listening. “I think I’ve turned it into… _hope_.”

“It’s about time,” Chase said. I turned around to see him walk over. “We’ve all believed in you from the time we started playing, but you were the one that always doubted yourself.”

“You’re right,” I said. “But it’s more than that too. I think I’ve finally realized that we actually… might survive all of this.”

The other three smiled at me. I looked back to see Morgan slumped against the wall, looking rather exhausted.

We just needed one last person to believe it too.


End file.
